Part 3

"A paralysing feeling of horror and surprise, and the violence with which I fell upon the mangled body of my victim, for a time deprived me of all consciousness of my situation; nor was it until the convulsive groans of the bleeding wretch beneath me recalled me in some measure to a sense of other miseries than my own, that a remembrance of the past, and a feeling of the present, opened upon my mind, like the confused terror of a dismal dream. I rose slowly to my feet, and, disengaging myself from the rope by which I was suspended into the vault, endeavoured to look around the walls of my prison-house--but all was dark as the grave. Recollecting the part sustained in seizing me by the wounded man, who still groaned and writhed at my feet, I darted fiercely upon him; and hurling him from the ground, exclaimed, 'Villain!--tell me or die!--where am I? or by whom am I brought here?' A loud, long yell of terror, accompanied by violent and despairing struggles, like a wild beast tearing from the paws of a lion, was the only answer returned by the miserable being. And as the piteous and heart-piercing yell rang round the cavern, and its echoes, multiplying in darkness, at length died away, leaving silence more dolorous than ourselves, I felt as a man from the midst of a marriage-feast, suddenly thrust into the cells of Bedlam; where, instead of the music of the harp and the lute, was the shriek and the clanking chains of insanity; for bridal ornaments, the madman's straw; and for the gay dance, the convulsions of the maniac, and the sorrowful gestures of idiocy. Every feeling of indignation passed away--my blood grew cold--the skin moved upon my flesh--I again laid the wretched man on the damp earth, and fearfully groped to the opposite side of the dungeon.

"As I moved around, feeling through the dense darkness of my prison, I found it a vast square, its sides composed merely of the rude strata of earth or rock; and measuring nearly six times the length of my extended arms. As often as I moved, bones seemed to crackle beneath my feet; and a noise, like the falling of armour and the sounding of steel, accompanied the crumbling fragments. Once I stooped to ascertain the cause, and raising a heavy body, a part of it fell with a loud, hollow crash among my feet, leaving the lighter portion in my hands. It was a round bony substance, covered, and partly filled, with damp, cold dust. I was neither superstitious nor a coward; but, as I drew my hand around it, my body quivered, the hair upon my head moved, and my heart felt heavy. It was the form of a human skull. The damp dust had once been the temple of a living soul. My fingers entered the sockets of the eyes--the teeth fell in my hands--and the still fresh and dewy hair twined around it. I shuddered--it fell from my grasp--the chill of death passed over me. The horrid conviction that I was immured in a living grave absorbed every other feeling; and smiting my brow in horror, I threw myself, with a groan, amidst the dead of other years.

"I again sprang to my feet, with the undetermined and confused wildness of despair. The mournful howlings of the assassin continued to render the horrid sepulchre still more horrible, and gave to its darkness a deeper ghostliness. Dead to every emotion of sympathy, stricken with dismal realities, and more terrible imaginations, yet burning for revenge, directed by the howlings of the miserable man, and hesitating to distinguish between them and their incessant echoes, stretching my hands before me, I again approached him, to extort a confession of the cause and place of my imprisonment, or rather living burial. Vainly I raised him from the ground--threatening, soothing, and expostulation were alike unavailing. On hearing my voice, the miserable being shrieked with redoubled bitterness, plunged furiously, and gnashed his teeth, fastening them, in the extremity of his frenzy, in his own flesh. His fierce agony recalled to my bosom an emotion of pity; and, for a moment, forgetful of my own injuries and condition, I thought only of relieving his suffering; but my presence seemed to add new madness to his tortures; and he tore himself from my hold with the lamentable yells of a tormented mastiff, and the strength of a giant who, in the last throe of expiring nature, grapples with his conqueror. He reeled wildly a few paces, and fell, with a crash, upon the earth.

"Slowly and dismally the hours moved on, with no sound to measure their progress, save the audible beating of my own heart, and the death-like howling moan of my companion. As I leaned against the wall, counting these dismal divisions of time, which appeared thus fearfully to mete out the duration of my existence, through the black darkness, whose weight had become oppressive to my eyeballs, I beheld, far above me, on the opposite wall, a faint shadow, like the ghost of light, streaking its side, but so indistinct and imperfect, I knew not whether it was fancy or reality. With the earnestness of death, my eyes remained fixed on the 'gloomy light;' and it threw upon my bosom a hope dim as itself. Again I doubted its existence--deemed it a creation of my brain; and groping along the damp floor, where my hand seemed passing over the ribs of a skeleton, I threw a loose fragment in the air, towards the point from whence the doubted glimmering proceeded; and perceived, for a moment, as it fell, the shadow of a substance. Then, springing forward to the spot, I gasped to inhale, with its feeble ray, one breath that was not agony.

"Thirst burned my lips, and, to cool them, they were pressed against the damp walls of the prison; but my tongue was still dry--my throat parched--and hunger began to prey upon me. While thus suffering, a faint light streamed from a narrow opening in the roof of the vault. Slowly a feeble lamp was lowered through the aperture, and descended within two or three feet of my head. A small basket, containing a portion of bread and a pitcher of water, suspended by a cord, was let down into the vault. I seized the pitcher, as I would have rushed upon liberty; and raising it to my lips, as the pure, grateful beverage allayed the fever of my thirst, I shed a solitary tear, and, in the midst of my misery, that tear was a tear of joy--like the morning-star gilding the horizon, when the surrounding heavens are wrapped in tempest. With it the feelings of the Christian and the man met in my bosom; and, bending over my fellow-sufferer, I applied the water to his lips. The poor wretch devoured the draught to its last drop with greediness.

"The presence and the unceasing groans of my companion--yea, the dungeon and darkness themselves--were forgotten in the one deadening and bitter idea, that my wife and child were also captives, and in the power of ruffians. If any other thought was indulged a moment, it was longing for liberty, that I might fly to their rescue--and it was then only that I became again sensible of captivity; and my eyes once more sought the dubious gleam that stretched fitfully across the wall, becoming more evident to perception as I became inured to the surrounding blackness. Hope burned and brightened, as I traced the source of its dreamy shadows; and from thence weaved plans of escape, which, in the calculation of fancy, were already as performed; though, before reason and common possibilities, they would have perished as the dewy nets that, with the damps of an autumnal morning, overspread the hawthorn with their spangled lacework, and, before the rising sunbeam, shrink into nothing.

"But gradually my grief and despair subsided, and gave place to the cheering influence of hope, and the resolution of attempting my escape; and I rose to eat the bread and drink the water of captivity, to strengthen me for the task. For many hours, the presence of my companion had been forgotten; he still continued to howl, as one whom the horrors of an accusing conscience were withholding from the grasp of death; and I, roused from the reverie of my feelings and projects at the sound of his sufferings, hastened to apply water and morsels of bread to the lips of my perishing fellow-prisoner; for bread and water had been lowered into the vault.

"In order to carry my plan of escape into effect, for the first time, aided by the lamp that was suspended over me, I gazed inquisitively, and with a feeling of dismay, around the Golgotha in which I was immured. There lay my hideous companion, the foam of pain and insanity gurgling from his mouth; beside him the skeleton of a mailed warrior, and around, the uncoffined bones of four others, partly covered with their armour, and

'The brands yet rusted in their bony hands.'

"Although prepared for such a scene, I placed my hands before my eyes, shuddering at the thought of becoming as one of those--of being their companion while I lived--of lying down by the side of a skeleton to die! The horror of the idea fired anew my resolution, and added more than human strength to my arm. I again eagerly sought the direction of the doubtful gleam, which formerly filled me with hope; and was convinced that from thence an opening might be effected, if not to perfect liberty, to a sight of the blessed light of heaven, where freedom, I dreaded not, would easily be found. Filled with determination, which no obstacle could impede, I took one of the swords, which had lain by the side of its owner untouched for ages, and with this instrument commenced the laborious and seemingly impossible task of cutting out a flight of steps in the rude wall, and thereby gaining the invisible aperture from which something like light was seen to emanate. The ray proceeded from an extreme angle of the dungeon, and apparently at its utmost height. The materials on which I had to work were chiefly a hard granite rock, and other lighter, but scarce more manageable strata.

"Several anxious and miserable weeks thus passed in sluggish succession. Half of my task was accomplished; and hope, with impatience, looked forward to its completion. I still divided my scanty meals with my companion, who, although recovered from the bruises occasioned by his fall, was become more horrible and fiend-like than before. As his body resumed its functions, his mind became the terrible imaginings of a guilty conscience. He had either lost, or forgotten, the power of walking upright, and prowled, howling round the dungeon, on his hands and feet; while his dark bushy beard and revolting aspect gave him more the manner and appearance of a wild beast than a human being.

"Our portion of food being barely sufficient for the sustenance of one, hunger had long been added to the list of our sufferings; but particularly to those of the maniac. And, with the cunning peculiar to such unfortunates, he watched the return of the basket, which was daily lowered with provisions, and frequently before I--who, absorbed in the completion of my task, forgot or heeded not my jailer's being within hearing--could descend to the ground, he would grasp the basket, swallow off the water at a draught, and hurry with the bread to a corner of a dungeon; thus leaving me without food for the next twenty-four hours.

"It was at the period when I had half completed my object, that my companion, springing, as was his wont, upon the basket, before I could approach to withhold him, succeeded in draining off the contents of a goblet, in which a few drops of a dark-coloured liquid still remained; and the pitcher of water was untouched. The wretched maniac had swallowed the draught but a few minutes, when, rolling himself together, his screams and contortions became more frightful than before, and increased in virulence for an hour. He lay motionless a few seconds, gasping for breath; then, springing suddenly to his feet, he gazed wistfully above and around him, with a look of extreme agony, and exclaiming, 'Heaven help me!' he rushed fiercely towards the wall in the opposite direction to where I was attempting to effect my escape, gave one furious pull at what appeared the solid rock, and, with a groan, fell back, and expired.

"When the horror occasioned by his death in some degree abated, the singularity of the manner in which he tore at the wall of the dungeon, fixed my attention; and, with almost frantic joy, I perceived that a portion of the hitherto thought impenetrable rock, had yielded several inches to his dying grasp. I hastily removed the body, and pulling eagerly at the unloosed fragment, it fell upon the ground, a rough unhewn lump of granite, leaving an opening of about two feet square in the rude rocky wall, from which it was so cut, as to seem to feeling and almost appearance a solid part of it.

"My task was now abandoned. The gleam of light, which for weeks was to me an object of such intense interest, proceeded from a mere hairbreadth cleft in the rock. Taking up a sword which lay upon the ground, I drew my body into the aperture formed by the removal of the piece of rock; and creeping slowly on my hands and knees, groping with the weapon before me, I at length found the winding and dismal passage sufficiently lofty to permit me to stand erect. I seemed enveloped in an interminable cavern, now opening into spacious chambers, clothed with crystal; again losing itself in low passages, or narrow chinks of the rock, and suddenly terminating in a slippery precipice, beneath which gurgling waters were heard to run. Hours and hours passed; still I was groping onward; when I suddenly found my hopes cut off, by the interposition of a precipice. I probed fearfully forward with the sword, but all was an unsubstantial void; I drew it on each side, and then it met but the solid walls. I knelt, and reached down the sword to the length of my arm, but it touched nothing. In agony, I dropped the weapon, by its sound to ascertain the depth; and, delighted, found it did not exceed eight or ten feet. I cautiously slid down, and groping around, again placed my hand upon the sword. Though my heart occasionally sank within me, yet the overcoming of each difficulty lent its inspiring aid to overcome its successor. Often every hope appeared extinct. Now I ascended, or again descended the dropping and crystalled rocks; now crept into openings, which suddenly terminated, and turning again, anxiously listened to the sound of the rippling water as my only guide. Often, in spite of every precaution, I was stunned with a blow from the abrupt lowness of the roof, or suddenly plunged to the arms in the numerous pools, whose waters had been dark from their birth.

"Language cannot convey an idea of the accumulating horrors of my situation. Struggling with suffocation, with a feeling more awful than terror, and with despair, the agony of darkness must be _experienced_ to be imagined.

"Still I moved on; and suddenly, when ready to sink, wearied, fainting, hopeless, the glorious light of day streamed upon my sight. I bounded forward with a wild shout; but the magnificent sun, bursting from the eastern heavens, blinded my unaccustomed gaze.

"I again found that I was free: but my wife--my child--where were they? It was many years before I learned that the nephew of the inquisitor, who had sought her hand, having died, she regained her liberty, and fled with our infant son to Scotland, to seek the home of her lost husband. Since then I have never heard of them again."

When the major had thus concluded his narrative,

"Here," said Christopher, "are two rings which were taken from the fingers of my mother--both bear inscriptions."

The old officer gazed upon them.

"They were hers--my Maria's!" he exclaimed; "I myself placed them upon her fingers. Son of my Maria, thou art mine!"

The major purchased a commission for his long-lost son; and when peace was proclaimed throughout Europe, they returned to Northumberland together, where Christopher gave his sword as a memorial to his foster-father, Peter Thornton, and his hand to Jessie Wilkinson.

THE TRIALS OF MENIE DEMPSTER.

In the contemplation of the affairs of the world, there is perhaps nothing that strikes a philosophical observer with more wonder than what has been quaintly called the mutability of truth. With the exception of some of the best ascertained laws of matter, and the evidences and sanctions of our holy religion, there is scarcely anything around us that can be said to be absolutely determined and ascertained in all its bearings--including the influential cause, in a chain extending its unseen links through many minds; the proximate cause, involved in the dark recesses of the soul of the actor; and the effects, spread forth in endless ramification through society. Men are judged of, condemned, hanged, reviled, ruined, elevated, applauded, and rewarded upon less than a thousandth part of the real moral truth that is evident to the eye of the Almighty; and it too often happens, that what seems to be best ascertained by the united testimony of many soothfast witnesses, is after all little better than a lie, or an invention of men's minds, rolled up in the clouds of prejudice, selfishness, or hallucination. This truth, of no truth, is apparent to all thinking men; and yet how melancholy is it to reflect that we are so constructed that we cannot but live and act upon the principle and practice that we see the whole, when we see only an insignificant part, that, if observed in the midst of the general array brought out by divine light, would appear not only a speck, but by the influence of surrounding evidence, changed in its nature, and reversed in its object and bearing! It was but a partial, though a striking illustration of this fact, that the murder which Sir Walter Raleigh saw committed with his own eyes from the Tower window came to him so distorted and changed, through the medium of public and judicial report, that he could scarcely recognise in it the lineaments of the vision of his senses; for if the act he witnessed performed in the streets of London were falsified by the errors or inventions of man, how little could have been known of the motives that led to its commission! This subject, if carried out, might open up a dreadful array of the effects of man's conceit and blindness, exhibiting innocent individuals paying the penalty of death for the crimes of others; characters without a stain immolated at the shrine of public prejudice; and innocence suffering in ten thousand different ways under the cruel scorn of the bloodthirsty Chiun of a blind yet self-sufficient public. We are led into these observations by the facts of a curious case of false implication that occurred near Edinburgh many years ago, from which, besides the interest it may inspire, we may learn the lesson of that charity which our blessed Saviour laboured so much to make a ruling principle in the men of the world, but with a success that might form a melancholy theme for the fair investigations of philanthropists.

In the village of Old Broughton, situated on the north of the old town of Edinburgh, and now nearly swallowed up by the surrounding masses of architectural grandeur that compose the new town of that proud city, there lived (we love the good old style of beginning a story) the old widow of William Dempster, who long officiated in the capacity of precentor in the ancient kirk of the Tron; where his voice, loud as that of Cycloborus, stirred the sleeping power of vocal worship in the breasts of the good citizens. His voice had long been mute, not as that of Elihu, who trembled to speak to the Lord, but as that of those who lie in the mould till that day when there shall be no hindrance by the chilling hand of death, to sing the praises of the King of heaven and earth. Yet the voice of thanksgiving was not silent in the house of the widow and fatherless, where old Euphan, as she was styled, and her pretty daughter Menie, lived that life whose enjoyments the proud may despise, but whose end and reward they may envy in vain. It may not be that it was their choice (as whose choice is it?) to be poor; but it was their wisdom to know, as expressed by old Boston, that it may be more pleasant to live in a palace, but it is more easy to die in a cottage. The characters of these individuals, who happily never dreamed of forming heroines in the "Border Tales," can be best appreciated by those who lived in the last century; for in these jaunty days, when the sun of perfectibility is beginning to dawn on the moral horizon of a once sinful world, the contentment that is derived from a trust in heaven, and the pride that is begotten of a virtue that rejoices in itself, are more often pictured by the pen of the fictioneer than found in the place and personages that be. The representations of our old painter, George Jamesone, would be true as applied to Euphan Dempster and her daughter; for the dresses of the women of Scotland underwent small change until the eventful era of the nineteenth century; but we need them not--for our faithful memory has treasured the description of our parent, who lived to set forth the old representative of the Covenanters, sitting with her linsey-woolsey gown, of green or cramosie, made close in the sleeves--the body tight, and peaked in the form of the old separate bodice--the huge swelling skirt of many folds, twined out at the pocket-holes, and open in front, to show the bright-coloured petticoat of callimankey--her round-eared mutch that served the purpose of bonnet and coif--her clear-bleached tuck, with its row of mother-of-pearl buttons running down the front--and her hose of white woollen, that disappeared at the extremities in the shoe, whose high-turned heels gave a kind of dignity to the step of the poor. The dress of the mother in those days was almost that of the daughter, with the exception of the head-gear, which, in the latter, was limited to a band of black velvet (the _bandeau_), to restrain the flowing locks; and, high as the word velvet may sound, there were few maidens, however poor, that wanted the small strip of the costly material that now is seen covering the whole persons of the wives of rich tradesmen.