University of Virginia Library

25. CHAPTER XXV.
THE END OF LEYCRAFT.

Poor Leycraft! The belief which his repentant soul had
cherished for years, lay dead at his heart. One by one
every hope had crumbled; the boy—such was the conviction
each unanswering face pressed upon him—the
boy was dead. To that pale young form, cold and deathward,
as to him it always lay stretched in the wood—
there was no resurrection. It was gone into another
world, and seemed dragging him, by a gentle violence he
could not resist, after. The remorse, which though sometimes
torpid, had been never entirely subdued, uncoiled
itself more and more and pierced him with strokes which
caused him to cry aloud with anguish. He could not be
silent nor at ease. He had fled from house to house,
lodging to lodging, where the horrible secret he was constantly
urged to babble, caused men and women to fall
away from his presence like that of one sick with the
plague. Even in cellars and cheap resorts, where the
language of crime and wrong is a familiar dialect, they

avoided his conversation, and begged him, in God's name,
to ease his soul to parsons and magistrates, and not to
them. Even the grim ten-pin player had deserted him.
Leycraft's constant wakings at the dead of night, and the
dreadful reproaches with which his soul laboured against
itself, were too much for him. So he flew from place to
place; from employment to employment. He tried—and
in vain—to quell his unhappy thoughts, to cheat himself
of that dreadful belief of the boy's death, by constant
change of work. He was now alone, in a rope-walk,
where Ishmael Small's prying ubiquity had found him.
The Walk was a long, low-roofed shed. It was pitched
in a hollow, on the outskirts of the city, and was out of
sight of human habitation and beyond the sound of human
voice. About it nothing but rank grass and odious
weeds, thick with thorns and death-white blossoms, grew
and pressed forward to the very door. On either side
the shed was pierced with small, narrow windows—its
whole length—looking out, on one hand, on a sluggish
vein of water that oozed through the hard soil, and on
the other, upon the field of shrubs and brambles. Here
Leycraft, at the earliest hour of the day—it was just sunrise,
and the sun, striking the shed on its eastern end,
filled the Walk with shadows—stood, his beard untrimmed
and his waste encompassed with unworked flax,
giving him the appearance of a satyr.

He stood at the remotest end and looked down its
whole dark length, with an eye which grew blank and
unsettled when it found nothing to rest upon. Then it
passed from window to window back again, more blank
than ever; no friendly face looked in, not even the miserable
picker who used to beg the refuse flax and ropes'
ends. He would have given the world if only Ishmael
had come and taunted him in the old fashion. And
then, with something of prayer and earnest imploring in
his features, he shot his glance into a corner, where two
wrens had held their nest for years, borrowing tow and
threads of twine from the floor, to build. The two wrens
were gone. Not a sparrow nor a fly crossed the unlucky
window-sills. A dread stillness was present, resting
like a cloud upon the roof and thickening the air. The
very Walk seemed to have gone into decay; it tottered

and shook like one in a palsy, as the silent winds hurried
past. What wonder if Leycraft's soul was appalled within
him!

“Lightnings blast me!” he muttered, struggling against
the feeling that crept upon him, and made him cold to the
heart; “What do they mean by leaving me here! Why
don't the sharks and indefatigables come and take me and
hang me?” Here he cast a side-way look at the rope he
had begun to twist. “I wish they'd send out the green
wagon, and treat me to a ride to the Tombs. Why don't
they? What do they mean? They don't know their duty
—that's plain. I ought to be kept in a cell till this cursed
fever's gone off; and then I should be hung out to dry.”
He laughed at the fancy; but it was a wretched, soulless
laugh, which betrayed him more than his words. His
thoughts took a new turn, and, catching his breath, in the
surprise with which another and deeper purpose than that
of yielding his body to the magistrates glided into his
mind, he went on now faster than ever with his task;
drawing out the flax, with a secret satisfaction—as he
paced backward, along the hard cold floor—every
now and then putting forth his whole strength, and
twisting the strands as firm and close as iron. It was wonderful
with what care and skill he framed his work;
choosing the cleanest flax in all the bunch, where there
was no spot nor blemish—his eye, in its supernatural
keenness, could have detected a fly-blow—shaping each
strand delicately to an equal size; and twisting them all
so cleanly together, that the cord, as fast as formed, was
admirably round and firm, and not a thread or fibre hung
loose. There was a strange pleasure in Leycraft's look
when he saw how well he prospered in his work. But
even in the midst of his task a shudder came upon him;
his face grew dark and livid by turns, and his eyes wandered
about and seemed to dwell on a terrible and appalling
company that was present only to him. For a time
his hands refused to do the service to which they had been
constrained and struggled against it, as if they too were
endowed with a fearful consciousness. In this pause and
agitation of his spirit, he searched his garments, and
brought forth from his breast-pocket a small, square parcel,
which he proceeded tremblingly to open, fixing his

eyes more keenly and steadily as each envelope was removed.
His hand at length held disclosed a half-bracelet,
with its clasp; and while he regarded it he shuddered
anew, and writhed as in sudden pain. What was he to
do with this? He could not bear it about with him
longer; it seemed too like the child's voice whispering
in his ear; frail tress as it was, it held him fast, as a cable,
to the spot where the deed had been done; its brassy
clasp glared upon him like a serpent's eye. It seemed to
him now like the dead boy's legacy—for he had taken it
almost from his hand—carrying with it at all seasons of
day and night, its own avenging conditions. What was
to be done with it? At this moment, and while the question
demanded, every minute, an answer more loudly,
a shrunken and troubled face looked in at one of the windows
of the Walk. It was the face of an old man, who,
full of an anguish different—ah, how different, from that
of Leycraft—had wandered in the suburbs, many days,
and many weary, weary nights too, and who had strayed,
in the vacancy that had come upon him, to that place. It
was Hobbleshank: who, when he had gathered thought
to persue the person before him more closely, and saw
what unearthly look had settled in his features—how,
white and trenched with deep, dark lines as it was,
like a scarred coffin-plate, it seemed—recoiled from the
window, and gave signs of retreating altogether.

“For Heaven's good sake!” cried Leycraft, in a tone
of anguish that went to the old man's heart, “don't leave
me now. Stay only an hour or so—if not so long—five
minutes may do; five minutes at least. Come, come,
you'll give me five minutes!”

The old man returned to the window; but resisted
steadily all entreaty to come in.

“This is cruel!” said Leycraft aloud, and then, partly
to himself, “The last man with whom I shall change
word; and he wont give me his company as a christian,
but stands there gazing through a window on me as if I
were a wild beast at a show.”

At that moment Leycraft, who had bent down while
uttering these words to himself, raised his head and
caught the eye of the old man—his neck stretched forward
its utmost length—fastened on the bracelet which

he held in his open hand. He caught it back at once,
and restoring it quickly to its enclosure, thrust it into his
breast.

There was something fearful in that old man's face, now
that the light fell upon it;—it was the very face that had
watched him all through the night, in the garret of the
farm-house, and against which he had contended. This
was another blow that staggered him on swifter to his
fate. He went on stranding and coiling the rope, holding
every feature rigid and bracing his nerves with all his
will, lest his purpose should give way. The cord was
finished. Leycraft rose up, wiped his brow, on which a
cold, thick sweat had gathered—went to the window, and
while Hobbleshank could not move in his surprise, he
placed in his hand the parcel he had concealed.

“There,” said he, “take that; it's a bequest from a
man that will never know man more. It's the gift of a
young friend, the dearest I ever had, and I wish you'd
make much of it.”

He then proceeded, without another word, to put every
utensil of the Walk in its place; coiled up the rope he had
made with so much care, in the crown of his hat; closed
the windows, leaving Hobbleshank without, lost in vague
wonder and alarm; drew to the door, and putting the key
in a safe concealment where the other workmen might
find it when they came—as they would in an hour or
two—he withdrew from the Walk, which was now dark
and close as a tomb. He shaped his way toward the
river, looking back not once, but choosing the obscurest
paths and bye-ways, and following them steadily. Once
he leaped a wall, and crouching as he ran, he skirted
along the fence for half a mile or more, and then he got
into an untraveled road, where he made good speed, and
with a comfort—such comfort as his condition allowed—
to himself. In leaving this he was forced to pass a public
way where there was a constant throng of travel; and
while in act of crossing, hearing the rattling of wheels
from the city, he fled into a blackberry meadow, and
there lay hid in the bushes for better than an hour.

He was now within sight of the woods; and when,
emerging from his ambush, his eye first fell upon them—
he shrunk back, and his feet for a moment refused to bear

him on. It was an instant only; and then he laughed to
himself at his folly in spoiling the good gait he had been
traveling.

At the woods—the black, dull, hemlock woods—which
lay like a dark stain upon the earth—he did not enter at a
point which would bear him soonest to the place he sought;
but fetched a circuit of better than a furlong, and looking
about him with a trembling eye, he crept into them,
as if by stealth. The sun had not yet made good his
strength, and the woods still swarmed with bats and birds
of darkness, which kept about and shut back the light
by the wide spread wings with which they oppressed the
air. Under foot the ground was heavy with a sluggish
sweat, rather than dew, and through blind paths and
among tufts of useless grass, Leycraft picked his way;
winding about in long circles and only approaching the
spot by degrees. His eyes wandered between the trees,
as though a phantom were walking just before him; if he
had cast a look upward but once, he would have seen how
blue and peaceful was the sky above him—but this he
heeded not. He had come to the edge of a bye-path that
cut through the woods; in a minute more and he would
be on the very spot itself. He paused and sate upon a
fallen trunk to gather his strength. What he had done
and what he was to do came upon him in all their hideousness,
and his heart misgave him. He would have retreated
if he could. At that moment he heard a step approaching;
a man passed by, and as Leycraft looked out, oh how his
soul begged and implored that he would come and reason
with him, and steal from his heart the purpose which clung
like a dagger in its very core! The cold sweat stood
upon his brow in the agony with which he was moved.
The man bore in his hand a walking-stick, with which,
with a determined look, he smote a tall weed that grew in
the path, to the ground. There was clearly no hope for
Leycraft. He sprung up, and almost at a bound, stood
upon the earth where, more than twenty years ago, he
had cast down a young child, as he would a frail vessel,
that all its life might be spilled and never gathered up
again. He knew the place—knew it at once, down to
the smallest blade that grew about. The rock was there,
under the lee of which the basket that held the child had

been set; the old gnarled branch stretched over it—older
now than when it shook its young summer leaves upon
the ground. Every circumstance and incident of the act
rushed back into his mind with a fearful distinctness.
How he had borne the child from the farm-house in his
arms—the very look of the nurse who had entrusted it to
him in the belief that a little air would be so reviving and
refreshing to the poor dear—how, when he heard the laugh
and prattle of young children at play in an orchard through
which he passed, he had repented of any part in the deed—
and how, again, when he bethought him of the rage of
the broker, and the spite he would wreak on him through
the debtor's jail—he had burried on. There was one
good thought, too, that came back; that when he had laid
the child where he was to be left to die—for his soul refused
to do it rougher violence—he had lifted a leaf, shed
by the overhanging branch upon its little lips, so giving it
another chance to live. He remembered, too, how he had
severed the bracelet about its neck in twain, taking one of
its parts and leaving the other, with the hope that the child,
should it live to escape its perilous exposure, might be
recognized and reclaimed.

As he was pondering, the dead child seemed to spring
from the ground, rising slowly upon him and growing rigid
in every limb as he rose, until he stood regarding him with
a fixed stony eye, his little arm stretched towards him in
menace, more terrible than if it had been a mailed hand
aimed against his breast. He staggered before it. The
wind, which had been gathering since sun-rise, swept
through the wood with a howl like that of an angry populace.
Leycraft, whose face and brow dripped with sweat,
and whose body was as chill and comfortless as if it had
been steeped in the river, cast a fearful glance behind
him, and snatching off his hat in desperate haste, he
stepped upon the rock, and made fast an end of the cord to
the old branch, which the tree held out like a withered
arm toward him. The tree creaked—there was an awful
groan—and the forfeit was paid. At that moment a crow
flew screeching from a neighboring tree top straight through
the wood, and as it rose toward the clouds that lowered
on its flight, it seemed like the dark spirit of the man, on
its way to the angry heaven whose judgment he had dared
to invoke.