University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

But the sound of horses' feet, and hurrying voices, aroused him
to the exercise of his leading instinct—that of self-preservation.
His senses seemed to return to him instantly under the pressure of
merely human fears. He hurried to the opposite apartment, silently
unclosed the outer door, and stealing off under cover of the woods,
was soon shrouded from sight in their impenetrable shadows.
But the same fascination which had previously led him to the fatal
window, now conducted him into that part of the forest which contained
the cruel spectacle by which his eyes had been fixed and
fastened. Here, himself concealed, crouching in the thicket, he
beheld the arrival of a motley crowd—white and black—old Cole,
with all the neighbours whom he could collect around him and
gather in his progress. He saw them pass, without noticing, the
object of their search and his own attention—surround his dwelling—heard
them shout his name, and finally force their way into
the premises. Torches were seen to glare through the seams
and apertures of the house, and, at length, as if the examination
had been in vain, the party reappeared without. They gathered
in a group in front of the dwelling, and seemed to be in consultation.
While they were yet in debate, the hoofs of a single horse,
at full speed, were heard beating the frozen ground, and another
person was added to the party. It did not need the shout with
which this new comer was received by all, to announce to the
skulking fugitive that, in the tall, massive form that now alighted
among the rest, he beheld the noble fellow whose love had been
rejected by Margaret for his own—Barnacle Sam. It is remarkable
that, up to this moment, a doubt of his own security had not
troubled the mind of Hurst; but, absorbed by the fearful spectacle
which, though still unseen by the rest, was yet ever waving
before his own spell-bound eyes, he had foregone all farther considerations
of his own safety. But the appearance of this man,
of whose character, by this time, he had full knowledge, had dis

pelled this confidence; and, with the instinct of hate and fear,
shuddering and looking back the while, he silently rose to his feet,
and stealing off with as much haste as a proper caution would
justify, he made his way to one of the landings on the river, where
he found a canoe, with which he put off to the opposite side. For
the present, we leave him to his own course and conscience, and
return to the group which we left behind us, and which, by this
time, has realized all the horrors natural to a full discovery of the
truth.

The poor girl was found suspended, as we have already in part
described, to the arm of a tree, but a little removed from the dwelling
of her guilty lover, the swinging boughs of which had been
used commonly for fastening horses. A common handkerchief,
torn in two, and lengthened by the union of the parts, provided the
fatal means of death for the unhappy creature. Her mode of procedure
had been otherwise quite as simple as successful. She had
mounted the stump of a tree which had been left as a horse-block,
and which enabled her to reach the bough over which the kerchief
was thrown. This adjusted, she swung from the stump, and passed
in a few moments—with what remorse, what agonies, what fears,
and what struggles, we will not say—from the vexing world of
time to the doubtful empire of eternity! We dare not condemn
the poor heart, so young, so feeble, so wronged, and, doubtless, so
distraught! Peace to her spirit!

It would be idle to attempt to describe the tumult, the wild uproar
and storm of rage, which, among that friendly group, seemed
for a season to make them even forgetful of their grief.
Their sorrow seemed swallowed up in fury. Barnacle Sam
was alone silent. His hand it was that took down the lifeless
body from the accursed tree—upon his manly bosom it was borne.
He spoke but once on the occasion, in reply to those who proposed
to carry it to the house of the betrayer. “No! not there! not
there!” was all he said, in tones low—almost whispered—yet so
distinctly heard, so deeply felt, that the noisy rage of those around
him was subdued to silence in the sterner grief which they expressed.
And while the noble fellow bore away the victim, with arms
as fond, and a solicitude as tender, as if the lifeless form could still
feel, and the cold defrauded heart could still respond to love, the

violent hands of the rest applied fire to the dwelling of the seducer,
and watched the consuming blaze with as much delight as
they would have felt had its proprietor been involved within its
flaming perils. Such, certainly, had he been found, would have
been the sudden, and perhaps deserved judgment to which their
hands would have consigned him. They searched the woods for
him, but in vain. They renewed the search for him by daylight,
and traced his footsteps to the river. The surrounding country
was aroused, but, prompted by his fears, and favoured by his fortune,
he had got so completely the start of his enemies that he
eluded all pursuit; and time, that dulls even the spirit of revenge,
at length served to lessen the interest of the event in the minds
of most of the survivors. Months went by, years followed—the
old man Cole and his wife sunk into the grave; hurried prematurely,
it was thought, by the dreadful history we have given; and of all
that group, assembled on the fatal night we have just described,
but one person seemed to keep its terrible aspect forever fresh before
his eyes—and that was Barnacle Sam.

He was a changed man. If the previous desertion and caprice
of the wretched Margaret, who had paid so heavy a penalty for
the girlish injustice which she had inflicted on his manly heart,
had made him morose and melancholy, her miserable fate increased
this change in a far more surprising degree. He still, it is
true, continued the business of a raftsman, but, had it not been for
his known trustworthiness, his best friends and admirers would
have certainly ceased altogether to give him employment. He
was now the creature of a moodiness which they did not scruple
to pronounce madness. He disdained all sort of conference with
those about him, on ordinary concerns, and devoting himself to the
Bible, he drew from its mystic, and to him unfathomable, resources,
constant subjects of declamation and discussion. Its thousand
dark prophecies became unfolded to his mind. He denounced the
threatened wrath of undesignated ages as already at the door—
called upon the people to fly, and shouted wildly in invocation of
the storm. Sometimes, these moods would disappear, and, at such
times, he would pass through the crowd with drooping head and
hands, the humbled and resigned victim to a sentence which seemed
destined for his utter annihilation. The change in his physical

nature had been equally great and sudden. His hair, though
long and massive, suddenly became white as snow; and though
his face still retained a partial fulness, there were long lines and
heavy seams upon his cheeks, which denoted a more than common
struggle of the inner life with the cares, the doubts, and the
agonies of a troubled and vexing existence. After the lapse of a
year, the more violent paroxysms of his mood disappeared, and
gave place to a settled gloom, which was not less significant than
his former condition of an alienated mind. He was still devoted
to religion—that is to say, to that study of religious topics, which,
among ignorant or thoughtless people, is too apt to be mistaken
for religion. But it was not of its peace, its diffusing calm, its
holy promise, that he read and studied. His favourite themes
were to be found among the terrible judgments, the fierce vengeances,
the unexampled woes, inflicted, or predicted, in the prophetic
books of the Old Testament. The language of the prophets,
when they denounced wrath, he made his own language; and
when his soul was roused with any one of these subjects, and
stimulated by surrounding events, he would look the Jeremiah that
he spoke—his eyes glancing with the frenzy of a flaming spirit—
his lips quivering with his deep emotions—his hands and arms
spread abroad, as if the phials of wrath were in them ready to be
emptied—his foot advanced, as if he were then dispensing judgment—his
white hair streaming to the wind, with that meteor-likeness
which was once supposed to be prophetic of “change,
perplexing monarchs.” At other times, going down upon his
rafts, or sitting in the door of his little cabin, you would see him
with the Bible on his knee—his eyes lifted in abstraction, but his
mouth working, as if he then busied himself in calculation of those
wondrous problems, contained in the “times and half times,” the
elucidation of which, it is supposed, will give us the final limit
accorded to this exercise of our human toil in the works of the
devil.