University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.

It was on the evening of the day on which the
conversation we have related, had occurred between
young Wilson and his mother, that Jane,
just as she had parted with Erskine, after an unusually
delightful walk, and was entering her aunt's
door, heard her name pronounced in a low voice.
She turned, and saw an old man emerging from behind
a projection of the house. He placed his
finger on his lips by way of an admonition to silence,
and said softly to Jane, “For the love of
Heaven, come to my house to-night; you may
save life; tell no one, and come after the family
is in bed.”

“But, John, I do not know the way to your
house,” replied Jane, amazed at the strange request.

“You shall have a guide, Miss. Don't be afraid;
'tis not like you to be afraid, when there is good to
be done; and I tell you, you may save life; and

every one that knows me, knows I never tell a lie
for any body.”

“Well,” said Jane, after a moment's pause, “if
I go, how shall I find the way?”

“That's what I am afraid will frighten you most
of all; but it must be so. You know where Lucy
Willett's grave is, on the side of the hill, above
the river; there you will find crazy Bet waiting
for you. She is a poor cracked body, but there is
nobody I would sooner trust in any trouble; besides,
she is in the secret already, and there is no
help for it.”

“But,” said Jane, “may I not get some one else
to go with me?”

“Not for the wide world. Nothing will harm
you.”

Jane was about to make some further protestation,
when a sound from the house alarmed the
man, and he disappeared as suddenly as he had
made his entree.

John was an old man, who had been well known
to two or three successive generations in the village.
He had never had health or strength for
hard labour, but had gained a subsistence by making
baskets, weaving new seats into old chairs, collecting
herbs for spring beer, and digging medicinal
roots from the mountains: miscellaneous offices,
which are usually performed by one person,
where the great principle of a division of labour
is yet unknown and unnecessary. A disciple of
Gall might, perhaps, have detected in the conformation
of the old man's head, certain indications

of a contemplative turn of mind, and a feeling
heart; but, as we are unlearned in that fashionable
science, we shall simply remark, that there
was, in the mild cast of his large but sunken eye,
and the deep-worn channels of his face, an expression
that would lead an observer to think he
had felt and suffered; that he possessed the wisdom
of reflection, as well as the experience of
age; and that he had been accustomed, in nature's
silent and solitary places, to commune with the
Author of Nature. He inhabited a tenement at
some distance from the village, but within the precincts
of the town. When the skill of the domestic
leeches was at fault, in the case of a sick
cow or a wormy child, he was called to a consultation,
and the efficacy of the simples he had
administered, had sometimes proved so great, as
to induce a suspicion of a mysterious charm. But
the superstitious belief in witches and magic has
vanished with the mists of other times; and the
awe of `John of the Mountain,' as he was called,
or for brevity's sake, `John Mountain,' never outlived
the period of childhood.

Jane knew John was honest and kind-hearted,
and particularly well disposed to her, for he had
occasionally brought her a pretty wild-flower, or a
basket of berries, and then he would say, “Ah,
Miss Jane, I grow old and forgetful, but the old
man can't forget the kindness that's been done to
him in days past; you as gay as a lark then.
My poor old bald head! it's almost as bare inside
as out; but I shall never forget the time—it was a

sorrowful year, we had had a hard winter, the
snows drifted on the mountains, and for six weeks
I never saw the town, and poor Sarah lying sick
at home; and when I did get out, I came straight
to your mother's, for she had always a pitiful heart,
and an open and a full hand too, and she stocked
my alms basket full of provisions. Then you came
skipping out of the other room, with a flannel
gown in your hand, and your very eyes laughed
with pleasure, and when you gave it to me, you
said, “It is for your wife, and I sewed every
stitch of it, John;” and then you was not bigger
than a poppet, and could not speak plain yet.
When I got home, and told my old woman, she
shook her head, and said, you “was not long for
this world;” but I laughed at her foolishness, and
asked her, if the finest saplings did not live to
make the noblest trees? Thanks to Him that is
above, you are alive at this day, and many a wanderer
will yet find shelter in your branches.”

We trust our readers will pardon this digression,
and accept the gratitude of the old man, as a proof
that all men's good deeds are not `written in
sand.'

After John's departure, Jane remained for a
few moments where he had left her, ruminating
on his strange request, when her attention was
called to a noise in her aunt's sleeping apartment,
and she heard, as she thought, crazy Bet's voice
raised to its highest pitch. She passed hastily
through the passage, and on opening her aunt's
door, she beheld a scene of the greatest confusion.

The bed-clothes had been hastily stripped from
the bed and strewed on the floor, and Bet stood
at the open window with the bed in her right
hand. She had, by a sudden exertion of her
strength, made an enormous rent in the well-wove
home-made tick, and was now quite leisurely
shaking out the few feathers that still adhered to
it. In her left hand she held a broom, which she
dexterously brandished, to defend herself from the
interference of Sukey, the coloured servant girl,
who stood panic-struck and motionless; her dread
of her mistress' vengeance impelling her forward,
and her fear of the moody maniac operating upon
her locomotive powers, like a gorgon influence.
Her conflicting fears had not entirely changed her
ethiopian skin, but they had subtracted her colour
in stripes, till she looked like Robin Hood's willow
wand.

“Why did you not stop her?” exclaimed Jane,
hastily passing the girl.

“Stop her, missy? the land's sake! I could
as easy stop a flash of lightning! missy must think
me a 'rac'lous creature, respecting me to hold
back such a harricane.”

At Jane's approach Bet dropped the broom,
and threw the empty bed-tick at poor Sukey, who
shook it off, not, however, till her woolly pate was
completely powdered with the lint. “Now,
Sukey,” screamed Bet with a wild peal of laughter,
“look in the glass, and you'll see how white
you'll be in heaven; the black stains will all be
washed out there!”

“But, Bet,” said Jane, “where are the feathers?”

“Where? child,” she replied, smiling with the
most provoking indifference, “where are last
year's mourners? where is yesterday's sunshine,
or the morning's fog?”

“Why did you do this, Bet?”

“Do you ask a reason of me?” she replied,
with a tone in which sorrow and anger were equally
mingled, and then putting her finger to her
forehead, she added, “the light is quite out, there
is not a glimmering left.”

Jane felt that the poor woman was not a subject
for reproach; and turning away, she said, “Aunt
will be very angry.”

“Yes,” replied Bet, “she will weep and howl,
but she should thank me for silencing some of the
witnesses.”

“Witnesses, Bet?”

“Yes, child, witnesses; are not moth-eaten
garments and corrupted riches witnesses against
the rich, the hard-hearted, and close-handed? She
should not have denied a bed to my aching head
and weary body. She should not have told me,
that the bare ground and hard boards were soft
and easy enough for a “rantipole beggar.”

The recollection of the promise she had given
to John now occurred to Jane, and she was deliberating
whether or not to speak to Bet about it,
when Mrs. Wilson, who had been absent on a visit
to one of her neighbours, came in. In her passage
through the kitchen, Sukey had hinted to her

her loss, and she hastened on to ascertain its extent.
Inquiries were superfluous; the empty
tick was lying where Sukey had left it, and the
feathers which had swelled it almost to bursting,
were not. Mrs. Wilson darted forwards towards
Bet, on whom she would have wreaked
her hasty vengeance, but Bet, aware of her intention,
sprang through the window, quick as
thought, and so rapid, and as it were, spiritual,
was her flight, that a minute had scarcely passed,
when the shrill tones of her voice were
heard rising in the distance, and they were just
able to distinguish the familiar words of her favourite
methodist hymn—

Mrs. Wilson turned to Jane, and with that disposition
which such persons have when any evil
befals them, to lay the blame on somebody, she
would have vented her spite on her, but it was too
evident that the only part Jane had had in the
misfortune was an ineffectual effort to avert it, and
the good lady was deprived of even that alleviation
of her calamity. This scene, notwithstanding
the pecuniary loss sustained by Mrs. Wilson,
occasioned Jane a good deal of diversion. Still
it was not at all calculated to inspire her with
confidence in the guide, whose wild and fantastic
humours she knew it to be impossible for any one
to control. Her resolution was a little shaken;
but, after all, she thought, “It is possible I may

find the house without her. I know the course I
should take. At any rate, I should be miserable
if any evil should come of my neglect of the old
man's request. There can be no real dangers,
and I will not imagine any.”

Still, after the family were all hushed in repose,
and Jane had stolen from her bed and dressed herself
for her secret expedition, she shrunk involuntarily
from the task before her. “I do not like this
mystery,” said she, mentally; “I wish I had told
my aunt, and asked David to go with me, or I
might have told Mary Hull. There could have
been no harm in that. But it is now too late.
John said, I might save life, and I will think of
nothing else.”

She rose from the bed, where she had seated
herself to ponder, for the last time, upon the difficulties
before her, crept softly down stairs, passed
her aunt's room, and got clear of the house unmolested,
except by a slight growl from Brutus,
the house-dog, whose dreams she had broken, but,
at her well-known kindly patting, and “Lie down
Brutus, lie down,” he quietly resumed his sleeping
posture. Her courage was stimulated by having
surmounted one obstacle. The waning moon
had risen, and shed its mild lustre over the peaceful
scene. “Now,” thought Jane, “that I have
stirred up my womanish thoughts with a manly
spirit, I wonder what I could have been afraid
of.”

Anxious to ascertain whether she was to have

the doubtful aid of crazy Bet's conduct, or trust
solely to her own, she pressed onward. To shorten
her way to Lucy's grave, and to avoid the possibility
of observation, she soon left the public road,
and walked along under the shadow of a low-browed
hill, which had formerly been the bank of the
river, but from which it had receded and left an
interval of beautiful meadow between the hill and
its present bed. The deep verdure of the meadow
sparkled with myriads of fire-flies, that seemed,
in this hour of their dominion, to be keeping
their merry revels by the music of the passing
stream. The way was, as yet, perfectly familiar
to Jane. After walking some distance in a straight
line, she crossed the meadow by a direct path to
a large tree, which had been, in part, uprooted by
a freshet, and which now laid across the river, and
supplied a rude passage to the adventurous, the
tenacity of some of its roots still retaining it firmly
in the bank. Fortunately the stream was unusually
low, and when our heroine reached the
further extremity of the fallen trunk, she sprang
without difficulty over the few feet of water between
her and the dry sand of the shore.

“That's well done!” exclaimed crazy Bet, in
a voice that made the welkin ring, and starting
up from the mound. “Strong of heart, and light
of foot, you are a fit follower for one that hates
the broad and beaten road, and loves the narrow
straight way and the high rock. Sit down and
rest you,” she continued, for Jane was out of

breath from ascending the steep bank where crazy
Bet stood; “sit down, child; you may sit quiet.
It is not time for her to rise yet.”

“Oh, Bet,” said Jane, “if you love me, take
those greens off your head; they make you look
so wild.”

A stouter heart than Jane's would have quailed
at Bet's appearance. She had taken off her old
bonnet and tied it on a branch of the tree that
shaded the grave, and twisted around her head a
full leaved vine, by which she had confined bunches
of wild flowers, that drooped around her pale brow
and haggard face; her long hair was streaming
over her shoulders; her little black mantle thrown
back, leaving her throat and neck bare. The excitement
of the scene, the purpose of the expedition,
and the moonlight, gave to her large black
eyes an unusual brightness.

To Jane's earnest entreaty she replied, “Child,
you know not what you ask. Take off these greens,
indeed! Every leaf of them has had a prayer said
over it. There is a charm in every one of them.
There is not an imp of the evil one that dares to
touch me while I wear them. The toad with his
glistening eye, springs far from me; and the big
scaly snake, that's coiled and ready to dart, glides
away from me.”

“But,” said Jane, in a tone of more timid expostulation,
“what have I to guard me, Bet?”

“You!” and as she spoke she stroked Jane's
hair back from her pure smooth brow; “have not
you innocence? and know you not that is `God's

seal in the forehead' to keep you from all harm.
Foolish girl! sit down—I say, she will not rise
yet.”

Jane obeyed her command, and rallying her
spirits, replied, “No, Bet, I am not afraid she will
rise. I believe the dead lie very quiet in their
graves.”

“Yes, those may that die in their beds and are
buried by the tolling of the bell, and lie with a
merry company about them in the church yard;
but, I tell you, those that row themselves over the
dark river, never have a quiet night's rest in their
cold beds.”

“Come,” said Jane, impatiently rising, “for
mercy's sake, let us go.”

“I cannot stir from this spot,” replied Bet, “till
the moon gets above that tree; and so be quiet,
while I tell you Lucy's story. Why, child, I sit
here watching by her many a night, till her hour
comes, and then I always go away, for the dead
don't love to be seen rising from their beds.”

“Well, Bet, tell me Lucy's story, and then I
hope you will not keep me any longer here; and
you need not tell me much, for, you know, I have
heard it a thousand times.”

“Ah! but you did not see her as I did, when
Ashley's men went out, and she followed them, and
begged them on her knees, for the love of God,
not to fire upon the prisoners; for the story had
come, that Shay's men would cover their front
with the captives; and you did not see her when
he was brought to her shot through the heart, and

dead as she is now. She did not speak a word—
she fell upon his neck, and she clasped her arms
round him; they thought to cut them off, it was
so hard to get them loose;—and when they took
her from him, (and the maniac laid her hand on
Jane's head) she was all gone here. The very
day they put him under the green sod, she drowned
herself in that deep place, under the mourning
willow, that the boys call Lucy's well. And they
buried her here, for the squires and the deacons
found it against law and gospel too, to give her
Christian burial.”

Bet told all these circumstances with an expression
and action that showed she was living the
scene over, while her mind dwelt on them. Jane
was deeply interested; and when Bet concluded,
she said, “Poor Lucy! I never felt so much for
her.”

“That's right, child; now we will go on—but
first let that tear-drop that glistens in the moonbeam,
fall on the grave, it helps to keep the grass
green—and the dead like to be cried for;” she
added mournfully.

They now proceeded; crazy Bet leading the
way, with long and hasty strides, in a diagonal
course still ascending the hill, till she plunged into
a deep wood, so richly clothed with foliage as to
be impervious to the moon-beams, and so choked
with underbrush, that Jane found it very difficult
to keep up with her pioneer. They soon, however,
emerged into an open space, completely
surrounded and enclosed by lofty trees. Crazy

Bet had not spoken since they began their walk;
she now stopped, and turning abruptly to Jane,
“Do you know,” said she, “who are the worshippers
that meet in this temple? the spirits that
were `sometime disobedient,' but since He went
and preached to them, they come out from their
prison house, and worship in the open air, and
under the light of the blessed heavens.”

“It is a beautiful spot,” said Jane; “I should
think all obedient spirits would worship in this
sanctuary of nature.”

“Say you so;—then worship with me.” The
maniac fell on her knees—Jane knelt beside her:
she had caught a spark of her companion's enthusiasm.
The singularity of her situation, the beauty
of the night, the novelty of the place, on which
the moon now riding high in the heavens poured
a flood of silver light, all conspired to give a high
tone to her feelings. It is not strange she should
have thought she never heard any thing so sublime
as the prayer of her crazed conductor—who raised
her arms and poured out her soul in passages of
scripture the most sublime and striking, woven
together by her own glowing language. She concluded
suddenly, and springing on her feet, said
to Jane, “Now follow me: fear not, and falter not;
for you know what awaits the fearful and unbelieving.”

Jane assured her she had no fear but that of
being too late. “You need not think of that;
the spirit never flits till I come.”

They now turned into the wood by a narrow

pathway, whose entrance laid under the shadow
of two young beech trees: crazy Bet paused—
“See ye these, child,” said she, pointing to the
trees, “I knew two, who grew up thus on the
same spot of earth;—so lovingly they grew,” and
she pointed to the interlacing of the branches—
“young and beautiful; but the axe was laid to the
root of one—and the other (and she pressed both
her hands on her head, and screamed wildly)
perished here.” A burst of tears afforded her a
sudden relief.

“Poor broken-hearted creature!” murmured
Jane.

“No, child; when she weeps, then the band is
loosened: for” added she, drawing closer to Jane
and whispering, “they put an iron band around
her head, and when she is in darkness, it presses
till she thinks she is in the place of the Tormentor;
by the light of the moon it sits lightly. Ye cannot
see it; but it is there—always there.”

Jane began now to be alarmed at the excitement
of Bet's imagination; and turning from her
abruptly, entered the path, which, after they had
proceeded a few yards, seemed to be leading them
into a wild trackless region. “Where are we
going Bet?” she exclaimed. “Through a pass,
child, that none knows but the wild bird and the
wild woman. Have you never heard of the “caves
of the mountain?”

“Yes,” replied Jane; “but I had rather not
go through them to-night. Cannot we go some
other way?”

“Nay, there is no other way; follow me, and
fear not.”

Jane had often heard of the pass called the
`Mountain-Caves,' and she knew it had only been
penetrated by a few rash youths of daring and adventurous
spirit. She was appalled at the thought
of entering it in the dead of night, and with such
a conductor; she paused, but she could see no
way of escape, and summoning all her resolution
to her aid, she followed Bet, who took no note of
her scruples. They now entered a defile, which
had been made by some tremendous convulsion of
nature, that had rent the mountain asunder, and
piled rock on rock in the deep abyss. The
breadth of the passage, which was walled in by
the perpendicular sides of the mountain, was not in
any place more than twenty feet; and sometimes so
narrow, that Jane thought she might have extended
her arms quite across it. But she had no leisure
for critical accuracy; her wayward guide pressed
on, heedless of the difficulties of the way. She
would pass between huge rocks, that had rolled
so near together, as to leave but a very narrow
passage between them; then grasping the tangled
roots that projected from the side of the mountain,
and placing her feet in the fissures of the rocks, or
in the little channels that had been worn by the
continual dropping from the mountain rills, she
would glide over swiftly and safely, as if she had
been on the beaten highway. They were sometimes
compelled, in the depths of the caverns, to
prostrate themselves and creep through narrow

apertures in the rocks, it was impossible to surmount;
and Jane felt that she was passing over
immense masses of ice, the accumulation perhaps
of a hundred winters. She was fleet and
agile, and inspired with almost supernatural courage;
she, `though a woman, naturally born to
fears,' followed on fearlessly; till they came to
an immense rock, whose conical and giant form
rested on broken masses below, that on every
side were propping this `mighty monarch of the
scene.'

For the first time, crazy Bet seemed to remember
she had a companion, and to give a thought to
her safety. “Jane,” said she, “go carefully over
this lower ledge, there is a narrow foot-hold there;
let not your foot slip on the wet leaves, or the soft
moss. I am in the spirit, and I must mount to
the summit.”

Jane obeyed her directions, and when, without
much trouble, she had attained the further side
of the rock, she looked back for crazy Bet, and
saw her standing between heaven and earth on
the very topmost point of the high rock: she
leant on the branch of a tree she had broken off
in her struggle to reach that lofty station. The
moon had declined a little from the meridian; her
oblique rays did not penetrate the depths where
Jane stood, but fell in their full brightness on the
face of her votress above. Her head, as we have
noticed, was fantastically dressed with vines and
flowers; her eyes were in a fine `frenzy, rolling
from earth to heaven, and heaven to earth;' she

looked like the wild genius of the savage scene,
and she seemed to breathe its spirit, when, after
a moment's silence, she sang, with a powerful and
thrilling voice, which waked the sleeping echoes
of the mountain, the following stanza:

In vain Jane called upon her. In vain she entreated
her to descend. She seemed wrapt in
some heavenly vision; and she stood mute again
and motionless, till a bird, that had been scared
from its nest in a cleft of the rock, by the wild
sounds, fluttered over her and lit on the branch
she still held in her hand. “Oh!” exclaimed she,
“messenger of love, and omen of mercy, I am
content;” and she swiftly descended the sloping
side of the rock, which she hardly seemed to
touch.

“Now,” said Jane, soothingly, “you are rested,
let us go on.”

“Rested! yes, my body is rested, but my spirit
has been the way of the eagle in the air. You
cannot bear the revelation now, child. Come on,
and do your earthly work.”

They walked on for a few yards, when Bet, suddenly
turned to the left and ascended the mountain,
which was there less steep and rugged than
at any place they had passed. At a short distance

before her Jane perceived, glimmering through
the trees, a faint light. “Heaven be praised!”
said she, “that must be John's cottage.”

As they came nearer the dog barked; and the
old man, coming out of the door, signed to Jane
to sit down on a log, which answered the purpose
of a rude door-step; and then speaking to crazy
Bet, in a voice of authority, which, to Jane's utter
surprise, she meekly obeyed—“Take off,”
said he, “you mad fool, those ginglements from
your head, and stroke your hair back like a decent
Christian woman; get into the house, but
mind you, say not a word to her.”

Crazy Bet entered the house, and John, turning
to Jane, said, “You are an angel of goodness for
coming here to-night, though I am afraid it will do
no good; but since you are here, you shall see
her.”

See her! See what, John?” interrupted Jane.

“That's what I must tell you, Miss; but it is a
piercing story to tell to one that looks like you.
It's telling the deeds of the pit to the angels above.”
He then went on to state, that a few days before he
had been searching the mountains for some medicinal
roots, when his attention was suddenly arrested
by a low moaning sound, and on going in
the direction from whence it came, he found a very
young looking creature, with a new-born infant,
wrapped in a shawl, and lying in her arms. He
spoke to the mother, but she made no reply, and
seemed quite unconscious of every thing, till he
attempted to take the child from her; she then

grasped it so firmly, that he found it difficult to remove
it. He called his wife to his assistance, and
placed the infant in her arms. Pity for so young
a sufferer nerved the old man with unwonted
strength, and enabled him to bear the mother to
his hut. There he used the simple restoratives his
skill dictated; but nothing produced any effect till
the child, with whom the old woman had taken
unwearied pains, revived and cried. “The
sound,” he said, “seemed to waken life in a dead
body.” The mother extended her arms, as if to
feel for her child, and they gently laid it in them.
She felt the touch of its face, and burst into a flood
of tears, which seemed greatly to relieve her; for
after that she took a little nourishment, and fell
into a sweet sleep, from which she awoke in a
state to make some explanations to her curious
preservers. But as the account she gave of herself
was, of necessity, interrupted and imperfect,
we shall take the liberty to avail ourselves of our
knowledge of her history, and offer our readers a
slight sketch of it.