 | CHAPTER V. The wigwam and the cabin |  |
5. CHAPTER V.
His accuser, the warm-hearted and resolute James Grayling,
did not sleep. The excitement, arising from mingling and contradictory
emotions,—sorrow for his brave young commander's
fate, and the natural exultation of a generous spirit at the consciousness
of having performed, with signal success, an arduous
and painful task combined to drive all pleasant slumbers from his
eyes; and with the dawn he was again up and stirring, with his
mind still full of the awful business in which he had been engaged.
We do not care to pursue his course in the ordinary walks
of the city, nor account for his employments during the few days
which ensued, until, in consequence of a legal examination into
the circumstances which anticipated the regular work of the sessions,
the extreme excitement of the young accuser had been renewed.
Macnab or Macleod,—and it is possible that both names
were fictitious,—as soon as he recovered from his first terrors,
sought the aid of an attorney—one of those acute, small, chopping
lawyers, to be found in almost every community, who are
willing to serve with equal zeal the sinner and the saint, provided
that they can pay with equal liberality. The prisoner was
brought before the court under habeas corpus, and several grounds
submitted by his counsel with the view to obtaining his discharge.
It became necessary to ascertain, among the first duties of the
state, whether Major Spencer, the alleged victim, was really
dead. Until it could be established that a man should be imprisoned,
tried, and punished for a crime, it was first necessary
to show that a crime had been committed, and the attorney made
himself exceedingly merry with the ghost story of young Grayling.
In those days, however, the ancient Superstition was not
so feeble as she has subsequently become. The venerable judge
was one of those good men who had a decent respect for the faith
and opinions of his ancestors; and though he certainly would not
have consented to the hanging of Macleod under the sort of testimony
to justify his present detention. In the meantime,
efforts were to be made, to ascertain the whereabouts of Major Spencer;
though, were he even missing,—so the counsel for Macleod
contended,—his death could be by no means assumed in consequence.
To this the judge shook his head doubtfully. “ 'Fore
God!” said he, “I would not have you to be too sure of that.”
He was an Irishman, and proceeded after the fashion of his country.
The reader will therefore bear with his bull. “A man may
properly be hung for murdering another, though the murdered
man be not dead; ay, before God, even though he be actually
unhurt and uninjured, while the murderer is swinging by the
neck for the bloody deed!”
The judge,—who it must be understood was a real existence,
and who had no small reputation in his day in the south,—proceeded
to establish the correctness of his opinions by authorities
and argument, with all of which, doubtlessly, the bar were exceedingly
delighted; but, to provide them in this place would
only be to interfere with our own progress. James Grayling,
however, was not satisfied to wait the slow processes which were
suggested for coming at the truth. Even the wisdom of the judge
was lost upon him, possibly, for the simple reason that he did not
comprehend it. But the ridicule of the culprit's lawyer stung
him to the quick, and he muttered to himself, more than once,
a determination “to lick the life out of that impudent chap's
leather.” But this was not his only resolve. There was one
which he proceeded to put into instant execution, and that was to
seek the body of his murdered friend in the spot where he fancied
it might be found—namely, the dark and dismal bay where the
spectre had made its appearance to his eyes.
The suggestion was approved—though he did not need this to
prompt his resolution—by his mother and uncle, Sparkman. The
latter determined to be his companion, and he was farther accompanied
by the sheriff's officer who had arrested the suspected felon.
Before daylight, on the morning after the examination before
the judge had taken place, and when Macleod had been remanded
to prison, James Grayling started on his journey. His fiery
zeal received additional force at every added moment of delay, and
neighbourhood of the spot through which his search was to be
made. When his companions and himself drew nigh, they were
all at a loss in which direction first to proceed. The bay was
one of those massed forests, whose wall of thorns, vines, and close
tenacious shrubs, seemed to defy invasion. To the eye of the
townsman it was so forbidding that he pronounced it absolutely
impenetrable. But James was not to be baffled. He led them
round it, taking the very course which he had pursued the night
when the revelation was made him; he showed them the very
tree at whose foot he had sunk when the supernatural torpor—as
he himself esteemed it—began to fall upon him; he then pointed
out the spot, some twenty steps distant, at which the spectre made
his appearance. To this spot they then proceeded in a body, and
essayed an entrance, but were so discouraged by the difficulties
at the outset that all, James not excepted, concluded that neither
the murderer nor his victim could possibly have found entrance
there.
But, lo! a marvel! Such it seemed, at the first blush, to all the
party. While they stood confounded and indecisive, undetermined
in which way to move, a sudden flight of wings was heard, even
from the centre of the bay, at a little distance above the spot
where they had striven for entrance. They looked up, and beheld
about fifty buzzards—those notorious domestic vultures of
the south—ascending from the interior of the bay, and perching
along upon the branches of the loftier trees by which it was overhung.
Even were the character of these birds less known, the
particular business in which they had just then been engaged, was
betrayed by huge gobbets of flesh which some of them had borne
aloft in their flight, and still continued to rend with beak and bill,
as they tottered upon the branches where they stood. A piercing
scream issued from the lips of James Grayling as he beheld this
sight, and strove to scare the offensive birds from their repast.
“The poor major! the poor major!” was the involuntary and
agonized exclamation of the youth. “Did I ever think he
would come to this!”
The search, thus guided and encouraged, was pressed with renewed
diligence and spirit; and, at length, an opening was found
but recently gone. The branches were broken from the small
shrub trees, and the undergrowth trodden into the earth. They
followed this path, and, as is the case commonly with waste tracts
of this description, the density of the growth diminished sensibly
at every step they took, till they reached a little pond, which,
though circumscribed in area, and full of cypresses, yet proved to
be singularly deep. Indeed, it was an alligator-hole, where, in all
probability, a numerous tribe of these reptiles had their dwelling.
Here, on the edge of the pond, they discovered the object which
had drawn the keen-sighted vultures to their feast, in the body of
a horse, which James Grayling at once identified as that of Major
Spencer. The carcass of the animal was already very much torn
and lacerated. The eyes were plucked out, and the animal completely
disembowelled. Yet, on examination, it was not difficult
to discover the manner of his death. This had been effected by
fire-arms. Two bullets had passed through his skull, just above
the eyes, either of which must have been fatal. The murderer
had led the horse to the spot, and committed the cruel deed where
his body was found. The search was now continued for that of
the owner, but for some time it proved ineffectual. At length, the
keen eyes of James Grayling detected, amidst a heap of moss and
green sedge that rested beside an overthrown tree, whose branches
jutted into the pond, a whitish, but discoloured object, that did
not seem native to the place. Bestriding the fallen tree, he was
enabled to reach this object, which, with a burst of grief, he announced
to the distant party was the hand and arm of his unfortunate
friend, the wristband of the shirt being the conspicuous
object which had first caught his eye. Grasping this, he drew
the corse, which had been thrust beneath the branches of the tree,
to the surface; and, with the assistance of his uncle, it was finally
brought to the dry land. Here it underwent a careful examination.
The head was very much disfigured; the skull was
fractured in several places by repeated blows of some hard instrument,
inflicted chiefly from behind. A closer inspection revealed
a bullet-hole in the abdomen, the first wound, in all probability,
which the unfortunate gentleman received, and by which he was,
perhaps, tumbled from his horse. The blows on the head would
appeared to have been singularly deliberate,—was resolved
upon making “assurance doubly sure.” But, as if the watchful
Providence had meant that nothing should be left doubtful
which might tend to the complete conviction of the criminal, the
constable stumbled upon the butt of the broken pistol which had
been found in Macleod's trunk. This he picked up on the edge
of the pond in which the corse had been discovered, and while
James Grayling and his uncle, Sparkman, were engaged in drawing
it from the water. The place where the fragment was discovered
at once denoted the pistol as the instrument by which the
final blows were inflicted. “'Fore God,” said the judge to the
criminal, as these proofs were submitted on the trial, “you may
be a very innocent man after all, as, by my faith, I do think there
have been many murderers before you; but you ought, nevertheless,
to be hung as an example to all other persons who suffer
such strong proofs of guilt to follow their innocent misdoings.
Gentlemen of the jury, if this person, Macleod or Macnab, didn't
murder Major Spencer, either you or I did; and you must now
decide which of us it is! I say, gentlemen of the jury, either
you, or I, or the prisoner at the bar, murdered this man; and if
you have any doubts which of us it was, it is but justice and mercy
that you should give the prisoner the benefit of your doubts; and
so find your verdict. But, before God, should you find him not
guilty, Mr. Attorney there can scarcely do anything wiser than
to put us all upon trial for the deed.”
The jury, it may be scarcely necessary to add, perhaps under
certain becoming fears of an alternative such as his honour had
suggested, brought in a verdict of “Guilty,” without leaving the
panel; and Macnab, alias Macleod, was hung at White Point,
Charleston, somewhere about the year 178—.
“And here,” said my grandmother, devoutly, “you behold a
proof of God's watchfulness to see that murder should not be hidden,
and that the murderer should not escape. You see that he
sent the spirit of the murdered man—since, by no other mode
could the truth have been revealed—to declare the crime, and to
discover the criminal. But for that ghost, Macnab would have
got off to Scotland, and probably have been living to this very
As the old lady finished the ghost story, which, by the way,
she had been tempted to relate for the fiftieth time in order to
combat my father's ridicule of such superstitions, the latter took
up the thread of the narrative.
“Now, my son,” said he, “as you have heard all that your
grandmother has to say on this subject, I will proceed to show
you what you have to believe, and what not. It is true that
Macnab murdered Spencer in the manner related; that James
Grayling made the dicovery and prosecuted the pursuit; found
the body and brought the felon to justice; that Macnab suffered
death, and confessed the crime; alleging that he was moved to
do so, as well because of the money that he suspected Spencer to
have in his possession, as because of the hate which he felt for a
man who had been particularly bold and active in cutting up a
party of Scotch loyalists to which he belonged, on the borders of
North Carolina. But the appearance of the spectre was nothing
more than the work of a quick imagination, added to a shrewd
and correct judgment. James Grayling saw no ghost, in fact,
but such as was in his own mind; and, though the instance was
one of a most remarkable character, one of singular combination,
and well depending circumstances, still, I think it is to be accounted
for by natural and very simple laws.”
The old lady was indignant.
“And how could he see the ghost just on the edge of the same
bay where the murder had been conmitted, and where the body
of the murdered man even then was lying?”
My father did not directly answer the demand, but proceeded
thus:—
“James Grayling, as we know, mother, was a very ardent,
impetuous, sagacious man. He had the sanguine, the race-horse
temperament. He was generous, always prompt and ready, and
one who never went backward. What he did, he did quickly,
boldly, and thoroughly! He never shrank from trouble of any
kind: nay, he rejoiced in the constant encounter with difficulty
and trial; and his was the temper which commands and enthrals
mankind. He felt deeply and intensely whatever occupied his
else than their past communion and the great distance by which
they were to be separated. The dull travelling wagon-gait at
which he himself was compelled to go, was a source of annoyance
to him; and he became sullen, all the day, after the departure
of his friend. When, on the evening of the next day, he
came to the house where it was natural to expect that Major
Spencer would have slept the night before, and he learned the fact
that no one stopped there but the Scotchman, Macnab, we see
that he was struck with the circumstance. He mutters it over
to himself, “Strange, where the major could have gone!” His
mind then naturally reverts to the character of the Scotchman;
to the opinions and suspicions which had been already expressed
of him by his uncle, and felt by himself. They had all, previously,
come to the full conviction that Macnab was, and had always
been, a tory, in spite of his protestations. His mind next, and
very naturally, reverted to the insecurity of the highways; the
general dangers of travelling at that period; the frequency of
crime, and the number of desperate men who were everywhere
to be met with. The very employment in which he was then
engaged, in scouting the woods for the protection of the camp,
was calculated to bring such reflections to his mind. If these
precautions were considered necessary for the safety of persons
so poor, so wanting in those possessions which might prompt cupidity
to crime, how much more necessary were precautions in
the case of a wealthy gentleman like Major Spencer! He then
remembered the conversation with the major at the camp-fire,
when they fancied that the Scotchman was sleeping. How natural
to think then, that he was all the while awake; and, if
awake, he must have heard him speak of the wealth of his companion.
True, the major, with more prudence than himself, denied
that he had any money about him, more than would bear his
expenses to the city; but such an assurance was natural enough
to the lips of a traveller who knew the dangers of the country.
That the man, Macnab, was not a person to be trusted, was the
equal impression of Joel Sparkman and his nephew from the first.
The probabilities were strong that he would rob and perhaps
murder, if he might hope to do so with impunity; and as the
stillness of the night, its gloomy depths and mournful shadows,
naturally gave rise to such reflections as would be equally active
in the mind of a youth, and of one somewhat familiar with
the arts and usages of strife. He would see that the spot
was just the one in which a practised partisan would delight to
set an ambush for an unwary foe. There ran the public road,
with a little sweep, around two-thirds of the extent of its dense
and impenetrable thickets. The ambush could lie concealed,
and at ten steps command the bosom of its victim. Here, then,
you perceive that the mind of James Grayling, stimulated by an
active and sagacious judgment, had by gradual and reasonable
stages come to these conclusions: that Major Spencer was an object
to tempt a robber; that the country was full of robbers;
that Macnab was one of them; that this was the very spot in
which a deed of blood could be most easily committed, and
most easily concealed; and, one important fact, that gave strength
and coherence to the whole, that Major Spencer had not reached
a well-known point of destination, while Macnab had.
“With these thoughts, thus closely linked together, the youth
forgets the limits of his watch and his circuit. This fact, alone,
proves how active his imagination had become. It leads him forward,
brooding more and more on the subject, until, in the very
exhaustion of his body, he sinks down beneath a tree. He sinks
down and falls asleep; and in his sleep, what before was plausible
conjecture, becomes fact, and the creative properties of his
imagination give form and vitality to all his fancies. These forms
are bold, broad, and deeply coloured, in due proportion with the
degree of force which they receive from probability. Here, he
sees the image of his friend; but, you will remark—and this
should almost conclusively satisfy any mind that all that he sees
is the work of his imagination,—that, though Spencer tells him
that he is murdered, and by Macnab, he does not tell him how,
in what manner, or with what weapons. Though he sees him
pale and ghostlike, he does not see, nor can he say, where his
wounds are! He sees his pale features distinctly, and his garments
are bloody. Now, had he seen the spectre in the true appearances
of death, as he was subsequently found, he would not
to his own account, almost out of all shape of humanity,
and covered with mud; while his clothes would have streamed
with mud and water, rather than with blood.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the old lady, my grandmother, “it's hard
to make you believe anything that you don't see; you are like
Saint Thomas in the Scriptures; but how do you propose to account
for his knowing that the Scotchman was on board the Falmouth
packet? Answer to that!”
“That is not a more difficult matter than any of the rest.
You forget that in the dialogue which took place between James
and Major Spencer at the camp, the latter told him that he was
about to take passage for Europe in the Falmouth packet, which
then lay in Charleston harbour, and was about to sail. Macnab
heard all that...'
“True enough, and likely enough,” returned the old lady;
“but, though you show that it was Major Spencer's intention to
go to Europe in the Falmouth packet, that will not show that it
was also the intention of the murderer.”
“Yet what more probable, and how natural for James Grayling
to imagine such a thing! In the first place he knew that
Macnab was a Briton; he felt convinced that he was a tory; and
the inference was immediate, that such a person would scarcely
have remained long in a country where such characters laboured
under so much odium, disfranchisement, and constant danger
from popular tumults. The fact that Macnab was compelled to
disguise his true sentiments, and affect those of the people against
whom he fought so vindictively, shows what was his sense of the
danger which he incurred. Now, it is not unlikely that Macnab
was quite as well aware that the Falmouth packet was in Charleston,
and about to sail, as Major Spencer. No doubt he was pursuing
the same journey, with the same object, and had he not
murdered Spencer, they would, very likely, have been fellow-passengers
together to Europe. But, whether he knew the fact
before or not, he probably heard it stated by Spencer while he
seemed to be sleeping; and, even supposing that he did not then
know, it was enough that he found this to be the fact on reaching
the city. It was an after-thought to fly to Europe with his ill-gotten
to the criminal, would be a probable conjecture in the mind of
him by whom he was suspected. The whole story is one of strong
probabilities which happened to be verified; and, if proving anything,
proves only that which we know—that James Grayling was
a man of remarkably sagacious judgment, and quick, daring imagination.
This quality of imagination, by the way, when possessed
very strongly in connexion with shrewd common sense
and well-balanced general faculties, makes that particular kind
of intellect which, because of its promptness and powers of creation
and combination, we call genius. It is genius only which
can make ghosts, and James Grayling was a genius. He never,
my son, saw any other ghosts than those of his own making!”
I heard my father with great patience to the end, though he
seemed very tedious. He had taken a great deal of pains to destroy
one of my greatest sources of pleasure. I need not add
that I continued to believe in the ghost, and, with my grandmother,
to reject the philosophy. It was more easy to believe the one
than to comprehend the other.
| CHAPTER V. The wigwam and the cabin | |