CHAPTER XXIII.

THE IRON ROOM--THE DEATH SHOT.

Ay, I had planned full many a sanguine scheme Of earthly happiness--romantic schemes, And fraught with loveliness:--and it is hard To feel the hand of death arrest one's steps, Throw a chill blight o'er all one's budding prospects, And hurl one's soul untimely to the shades, Lost in the gaping gulph of blank oblivion. HENRY KIRKE WHITE.

The Iron Room of the ancient Tolbooth of Edinburgh was a dreary vault of massive stone-work, and was named so in consequence of its strength and security. A low heavy arch roofed it, and the walls from which it sprung were composed of great blocks of roughly hewn stone elaborately built. Here and there a chain hung from them. The floor was paved, and the door was a complicated mass of iron bars, locks, bolts, and hinges. A single aperture, high up in the wall, admitted the cold midnight wind through its deep recess.

An iron cruise burned on a clumsy wooden table, near which sat Walter Fenton the condemned, with his face covered by his hands and his mind buried in sad and melancholy thoughts.

One bright and solitary star shone down upon him through the grated window, flashing, dilating, and shrinking; often he gazed upon it wistfully--for it was his only companion--the partner or the witness of his solitude and his sorrow. Once he turned to look upon it--but it had passed away.

He reflected that never again would he behold a star shining in the firmament.

Sad, bitter, and solitary reflection--for a few hours was all that was left him now: and, though the sands of life were ebbing fast, one absorbing thought occupied his mind--that Lilian was false and his rival triumphant; that all his long cherished schemes and dreams of love and happiness, glory and ambition, were frustrated and blasted irredeemably and for ever.

He was to die!

The infliction of punishment immediately after trial was anciently practised in all criminal cases, and the victim was usually led from the presence of the judge to the scaffold.

Walter had been doomed to death as a traitor, a raiser of sedition, and a deserter from the Scottish forces: the last accusation, in support of which his signed _oath of fealty_ to the Estates of Scotland, had been produced in council by General Sir Thomas Livingstone, commander-in-chief of the army, saved him the dishonour of dying on the gibbet.

The door of the Iron Room was opened stealthily, and the heavy bolts and swinging chains were again rattling into their places, when Walter slowly raised his head. His eye had become haggard, and his face was overspread with a deathly pallor. The tall spare form of the Reverend Mr. Ichabod Bummel stood before him, clad in his ample black coat with its enormous cuffs and pocket-flaps, his deep waistcoat, and voluminous grey breeches. He removed his broad hat, and smoothed down the long lank hair which was parted in a seam over the top of his cranium, and fell straight upon each shoulder. He did not advance, but continued to press his hat upon his breast with both hands, to turn up his eyes and groan mournfully.

"Poor youth!" he began, after two or three hems; "poor youth! now truly thou lookest like an owl in the desert, yea, verily, even as one overtaken in the Slough of Despond. Now thou seest how atrocious is the crime of rebellion, and how bitter its meed. Now thou seest how wicked is the attempt to overturn our pure and blessed Kirk as by law established, and to substitute anarchy and confusion for peace and brotherly love, and to involve the innocent with the guilty in one common destruction. Ewhow! O guilty madness--O miserable infatuation, that for the phanton of kingly and hereditary right, would ruthlessly hurl back the land into the dark abyss of Popery, restore the abomination of the mass, and substitute the vile and tyrannical James for that beloved prince of our own persuasion, now seated on Britain's triple throne, if not by that imaginary hereditary right, at least by the laws of the land, and the voice of those that are above it--yea, mark me, youth, above it--the ministers of the Gospel. The pious and glorious William hath been our Saviour from the devilish practices of Popery, and the machinations of all those spurious children of Luther and of Calvin, the Seekers, the Libertines and Independents, Brownists, Separatists and Familists, Antitrinitarians, Arians, Socinians, Anti-Scripturists, Anabaptists, Antinomians, Arminians, and a myriad other teachers of heresy and preachers of schism--whilk, my brethren--my brother, I mean--may Beelzebub confound! Oh, youth, how wicked and ungracious it is in thee to reject the stately Fig-tree with its sweetness and good fruit, and raise up the ancient thorn and prickly bramble to reign over us!"

"My good sir," replied Walter, "it is but a poor specimen of Presbyterian charity this, to come hither to a dismal vault, to heap contumely on the head of the fallen, to humble one who is already humbled--to bruise the bruised. Good sir, is it kind or charitable to rail at and exult over me in this my great distress?"

At this unexpected accusation, tears started into the eyes of Ichabod Bummel, who was really a good man at heart, though his virtues were sadly obscured by the fanaticism of the times.

"Do not misunderstand me, good youth," he replied hurriedly; "and do me not this great injustice. I come in the most humble and Christian spirit, to cheer thy last hour in this gloomy hypogeum, and for that godly purpose have brought with me a copy of my _Bombshell_, a most sweet and savoury comforter to the afflicted mind."

He drew that celebrated quarto from his voluminous pocket, laid it on the table, and opening it at certain places, turned down the corners of the leaves. He then produced a thick little black-letter psalm-book, the board of which bore the very decided impression of a Bothwell-brig bullet; he adjusted a great pair of round horn spectacles on his long-hooked nose, and in a shrill voice began his favourite chant:

"I like ane owle in desert am," &c.

So much did he resemble the feathered type of wisdom, that Walter could scarcely repress a smile.

"Young man, wherefore dost thou not join with me?" asked the divine, raising his black eyebrows and looking at Walter alternately under, over, and through his barnacles.

"Reverend sir, I never sung a Psalm in my life, and really cannot do so now."

"I warrant thou canst sing _Claver'se and his Cavaliers_, _King James's March_, _Rub-a-Dub_, and other profane ditties and camp-songs of thy wicked faction and ungodly profession," said Ichabod reproachfully.

At that moment the deep-mouthed bell of St. Giles, which seemed to swing immediately above their heads, gave one long and sonorous toll.

"It is the first hour of the last morning I shall ever spend on earth!" exclaimed Walter, starting up and striking his fetters together in the bitterness of his soul. "Oh, Lilian, Lilian, how little could we have foreseen of all this!"

He wept.

"'Tis well--no tears can be more precious than these," said Mr. Bummel, who thought his exhortations had begun to prove effectual. "Soon, good youth, shalt thou reach the end of this vale of tears! Lo! thy bride already waiteth thee, and these tears----"

"You deem those of contrition and remorse. They are _not_. I have done nothing to repent of, or for which I ought to feel contrite. I never wronged man nor woman, though many have wronged me in more than a lifetime can repay. These tears spring only from bitterness and unavailing regret. Have I no hope of pardon? I care not for life, but my king and the son of my king require my services, and could my blood restore them I would die happy. Where is old Sir Thomas Dalyell?"

"Gone to a warmer climate than Scotland," said Ichabod spitefully.

"Sir George of Rosehaugh?"

"He is gone where he cannot assist thee."

"Where is old Colin of Balcarris?"

"Fled no one knows whither."

"Where, then, is old Sir Robert of Glenae?"

"Gone to his last account with other persecutors."

"All then are dead or in exile, and none is left to be a friend to the poor cavalier."

"Save one," said Ichabod, pointing upward.

"True, true," replied Walter, and covering his face with his hands he stooped over the table and prayed intently.

Two o'clock struck, three and four followed, but still he remained, as Ichabod thought, absorbed in earnest prayer, and kneeling by his side, the worthy minister joined with true and pious fervour, till his patience became quite exhausted. He stirred him, and Walter, who had fallen asleep, started up.

"Is it time?" he asked.

"Thou hast slept well," said the divine, pettishly; "out of seven hours that were allotted three have already fled."

"My dear and worthy sir, you see how calm my conscience is. Perhaps it is hard to die so young; but for me life has now lost every charm. Death never has terrors to the brave. He opens the gates to a fame and a life that are eternal, and when the coffin lid is closed, sorrow and jealousy, envy and woe are excluded for ever. _In four hours more mine will have closed over me_. ------ Kingdoms and cities, the trees of the forest, the lakes, the rocks, and the hills themselves, have all their allotted periods of existence, and man has his; for every thing must perish--all must die and all must pass away. Oh, why then this foolish and unavailing regret about a few years more or less? ------ Front to front and foot to foot I have often met death on the field of battle, and if without flinching I have faced the volley of a whole brigade, that hurled a thousand brave spirits into eternity at once, shall I shrink from the levelled musquets of twelve base hirelings of the Stadtholder? ------ Will Lilian ever look on the grave where this heart moulders that loved her so long and so well? Oh no, for now she is the wife of another--oh, my God, another! In all wide Scotland there is not one to regret me, to shed one tear for me. I disappear from the earth like a bubble on a tide of events, leaving not one being behind me to recal my memory in fondness or regret."

* * * * *

The great clock of St. Giles struck the hour of seven.

Musquets rattled on the pavement of the echoing street; the door of the Iron Room opened, and the gudeman of the Tolbooth presented his stern and sinister visage.

"It is time," he announced briefly.

"I am ready," replied Walter cheerfully, and, with a soldier on each side of him and followed by the clergyman, he descended the narrow circular staircase of the prison, and, issuing from an arched doorway at the foot, found himself at the end of the edifice. Here he paused and gazed calmly around him.

An early hour was chosen for his execution, that few might witness it, for there existed in Scotland a strong feeling against William's policy; the massacre of Glencoe, the successive defeats and heavy expenses of the Dutch wars rankled bitterly in the minds of the people.

The lofty streets were silent and shadowy; scarcely a footfall was heard in them, and the dun sunlight of the September morning had not sufficient heat to exhale the haze of the autumnal night.

A company of Argyle's regiment--the perpetrators of the Glencoe atrocity--clad in coarse brick-coloured uniform of the Dutch fashion, were drawn up in double ranks facing inwards on each side of the doorway. They stood with their arms reversed, and each stooped his head on his hands, which rested on the butt of his musket. At the head of this lane were four drummers with their drums muffled and craped, and a plain deal coffin carried upon the shoulders of four soldiers. Walter, as he gazed steadily along these hostile ranks, saw only the sourest fanaticism visible in every face, and in none more so than that of their commander, a hard-featured and square-shouldered personage, with a black corslet under his ample red coat, and wearing a red feather in his broad hat. He introduced himself as--

"Major Duncannon, of the godly regiment of my noble lord Argyle." Walter bowed.

"Duncannon!" he replied; "your name is familiar to me as being the man who issued the orders for the massacre of Glencoe."

Duncannon gave Walter a steady frown in reply to his glance of undisguised hostility and contempt, and said--

"I obeyed the royal orders of King William III., to whom I say be long life--and, like thee, may all his enemies perish from Dan to Beersheba!"

"I do not acknowledge him; he hath never been crowned among us, nor sworn the oath a Scottish king should swear. Shame on you, sir, to rank this false-hearted Dutchman with our brave King William the Lion. Shame be on you, sir, and all your faction," cried Walter, holding up his fettered hands, while his cheek flushed and his eyes kindled with energy. "Let our people recollect that the last man whose limbs were crushed to a jelly by the accursed steel boots and grinding thumbscrews, was subjected to their agonizing torture by the "merciful" William of Orange--by the same wise prince by whose express orders the bravest of the northern tribes was massacred in their sleep and in cold blood! Let our brave soldiers, when the lash that drips with their blood is flaying them alive, remember that, like scourging round the fleet and keelhauling the hapless mariner, it is an introduction of the same pious and magnanimous monarch who planned, signed, and countersigned the mandate for the ruthless atrocity of Glencoe! Oh, Scotland, Scotland! disloyal and untrue to the line of your ancient kings, how long will you waste your treasure and pour forth your gallant sons to the Dutch and German wars of a brutal tyrant, who at once fears and hates and dreads, though he dare not despise you! But the hour is coming," and he shook his clenched hand and clanked his fetters like a fierce prophet--"when war, oppression, exaction, and devastation, will be the meed of the actions of to-day!"

"Silence, traitor!" exclaimed Duncannon, striking him with the hilt of his sword so severely that blood flowed from his mouth.

"Major Duncannon, thou art a coward!" said Walter, turning his eyes of fire upon him. "The brave are ever compassionate and gentle--but thou! away, man--for on thy brow is written the dark curse which the unavenged blood of Glencoe called down from the blessed God!"

Duncannon turned pale.

"Away with him!" he cried. "Drummers, flam off--musqueteers, march!" and the procession began.

The dull rolling of the muffled drums, the regulated tap of the burial march, and the wailing of the fifes, now shrill and high, and anon sweet and low, found a deep echo in Walter's melancholy breast. Sorrowful and solemn was the measure of the Psalm, and he felt his beating heart soothed and saddened; but he could only mentally accompany the clergyman who walked bare-headed by his side, and chaunted aloud while the soldiers marched.

Walter's cheek reddened, for his fearless heart beat high, and he stepped firmly behind his coffin, the most stately in all that sad procession, though marching to that dread strain which a soldier seldom hears, _his_ own death-march. The vast recesses of the great cathedral and the distant echoes of the central street of the city with all its diverging wynds, replied mournfully to the roll of the funeral drums.

He whose knell they rung seemed the proudest there among two hundred soldiers. Life now had nearly lost every charm, while religion, courage, and resignation had fully robbed death of all its terrors. Roused by the unusual sound, many a nightcapped citizen peered fearfully forth from his lofty dwelling; but their looks of wonder or of pity were unheeded or unseen by Walter Fenton. He saw only his own coffin borne before him and the weapons and the hands by which he was to die; but his bold spirit never quailed, and he resolved, with true Jacobite enthusiasm, to fall with honour to the cause for which he suffered.

"Halt!" cried Duncannon, and the coffin rang hollowly as it was placed beside the square stone pedestal of King Charles's statue, and Walter immediately kneeled down within it, confronting the stern Presbyterians of Argyle's regiment with an aspect of coolness and bravery that did not fail to excite their admiration and pity.

A sergeant approached to bind up his eyes.

"Nay, nay, my good fellow," said Walter, waving him away; "I have faced death too often to flinch now. Major Duncannon, draw up your musqueteers, and I will show you how fearlessly a cavalier of honour can die."

While twelve soldiers were drawn up before him and loaded their muskets, Walter turned his eyes for the last time to the glorious autumnal sun, whose red morning rays were shot aslant between two lofty piles of building into the shadowy and gloomy quadrangle formed by the ancient Parliament House, the Goldsmiths' Hall, the grotesque piazzas, and the grand cathedral. He gave one rapid glance of adieu around him, and then turned towards his destroyers.

"Farewell, good youth," said Mr. Bummel, as the tears of true and heartfelt sorrow trickled over his long hooked nose. "Farewell. When He from whose hand light went forth over the land, even as the rays of yonder sun--when He, I say, returns in His glory we will meet again. Till _then_, farewell." Covering his face with his handkerchief, he withdrew a few paces and prayed with kind and sincere devotion.

At that moment the hoofs of a galloping horse spurred madly down the adjacent street rang through the vaults and aisles of the great church. Walter's colour changed.

A reprieve!

Alas! it was only Lord Clermistonlee who, pale, panting, and breathless, dashed into the square to stay the execution; but the cry he would have uttered died away on his parched lips.

"He comes to exult over me," said Walter bitterly. "Behold, ignoble Lord," he exclaimed, "how a true cavalier can die! Musqueteers," he added, in his old voice of authority, "ready, blow your matches, present, God save King James the Seventh! give fire!"

The death volley rang like thunder in the still quadrangle. Four bullets flattened against the statue, eight were mortal, and with the last convulsive energy of death Walter Fenton threw his hat into the air and fell forward prostrate into his coffin a bleeding corpse.

Here ends our tale.

From that hour Clermistonlee was a changed man. Though given up to dark, corroding care and moody thoughts, he lived to a great old age, and was one of those who sold his country at the union. Soon after that event he died, unregretted and unrespected, and a defaced monument in the east wall of the Greyfriars Churchyard still marks the place where he lies.

His gossip, Mersington, would no doubt have obtained a comfortable share of "the compensations" in 1707 had he not (as appears from a passage in Carstairs' State Papers) unluckily been found dead one night in the severe winter of 1700, with a half-drained mug of burnt sack clutched in his tenacious grasp.

A few words more of Lilian, and then we part.

From the moment in which, with her child in her arms, she ascended the great staircase of Bruntisfield, she was never again seen.

Every place within the mansion and without, the woods, the lake, the fields, the muir were searched, but the lady and her child were seen no more.

An impenetrable mystery cast a veil of horror over their fate; but Mr. Ichabod Bummel, and the most learned divines of a kirk that was then in the zenith of its wisdom and power, gave it as their decided opinion that they had been spirited away by the fairies; an idea that was unanimously adopted by the people; nevertheless, a pale spectre, wailing and pressing a ghastly babe to its attenuated breast, was often visible on moonlight nights, among the old oak trees, the rocky heron shaws of the Burghmuir, or the reedy rhinns of its beautiful loch, and this terrible fact was solemnly averred and duly sworn to by various decent and sponsible men, such as elders and deacons of the kirk, who chanced to journey that way after nightfall.

In latter years it was to the long gloomy avenue or immediate precincts of the ancient house, that this terrible tenant confined her midnight promenades.

Many sceptical persons, notwithstanding the assertions of the aforesaid elders and deacons, declared the story of the apparition to be downright nonsense. Many more may be disposed to do so at the present day; but we would beg them to withold their decision until they have consulted as carefully as we have done, the MSS. Session Records of Mr. Bummel's kirk, entered in his own hand, and attested by the said elders and deacons at full length.

In the year 1800, when the stately and venerable mansion of Bruntisfield was demolished, to make way for the Hospital of Gillespie, within a deep alcove, or labyrinth of stone, in the heart of its massive walls, the skeletons of a female and child were discovered; some fragments of velvet, brocade, and a gold ring were found with them.

On touching them, they crumbled into undistinguishable dust.

THE END.

LONDON: PRINTED BY HARRISON AND SON, ST. MARTIN'S LANE.