University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER IV.

We neglected to mention, not foreseeing that
it might be necessary to the course of our history,
that the Heer Piper, when he pronounced
sentence upon the Long Finne, did also at the
same time declare, all that portion of Mark
Newby's halfpence which he carried about him,
utterly forfeited, one half to the informer, the
other to the crown of Sweden. It was accordingly
divided between Restore Gosling and the
Governor, as representative of Majesty.

The Long Finne accordingly entered the
prison, without that key which not only unlocks
stone walls, but also the flinty hearts of those
who are wont to preside within them. His
pockets were as empty as a church on week-days.
When, therefore, the next morning he
felt the gnawings of that insatiate fiend, whom

bolts, nor bars, nor subterranean dungeons,
suffice to keep from tagging at the heels of
man, and ventured to hint to dame Swaschbuckler
that he had some idea of wanting his
breakfast, that good woman promptly desired
him to lay down his dust, and she would procure
him a breakfast fit for Governor Piper
himself.

“But I have no dust, mother, as you call it,”
replied the youth.

“What, no money!” screamed out the Dame;
“der teufel hole dich, what brought thee
here then.”

“Master Lob Dotterel,” replied he.

“And thou hast no money—du galgen
schivenkel,” roared the dame.

“Not a stiver, nor even one of Mark Newby's
halfpence,” responded the Long Finne.

“Then thou gettest no breakfast here,” cried
the mistress of the stone jug, “except der
teufel's braden. It would be a fine matter
truly, if every galgengefallener spitzbube
were to be maintained here in idleness, at the
expense of the poor.” So saying, she waddled
indignantly out of the room, shutting the door
after her with great emphasis, and turning the

key with a quick motion, indicating wrath
unappeasable.

Dinner-time came, but no dinner; supper-time
came, but no supper; for it ought to be
premised, that it was one of the Heer Piper's
maxims, that the less a criminal had to eat in
prison, the more likely he would be to come to a
speedy confession of his crime. He therefore
made no provision for persons committed on
mere suspicion. Most people, we believe,
happen to be aware of the vast importance of
eating and drinking, not only as a very simple
means of supplying the wants of nature, but likewise
as creating certain divisions of time, where-by
that venerable personage is disarmed
of half his terrors, and the desperate uniformity
of his pace agreeably interrupted. Accordingly,
when the night came, and nothing to eat, the
Long Finne began to feel not a little tired of his
situation. He paced his solitary room in silent
vexation, occasionally stopping at the window,
which fronted the Governor's palace, and gazing
wistfully at the figures which passed backwards
and forwards about his little parlour. As he
stood thus contrasting the cheerful aspect of the
palace with his dark, noiseless prison, and his
own solitary starving state, he beheld them

bringing in the Heer's supper, and his bowels
yearned. The contrast was more than he could
bear; he flung himself upon the straw in a
corner of the room, and communed with himself
in the bitterness of his heart; he drank his
own tears in the extremity of his thirst, and
finallysinking under weakness, and the emotions
of his heart, fell asleep.

From this last refuge of misery and hunger
the Long Finne was awakened by a loud peal
of thunder, that seemed to have shattered the
prison into atoms. On opening his eyes, the
first object he beheld, by the almost unceasing
flashes of lightning, was a figure standing over
him, half bent, and leaning upon a stick, muttering
and mumbling some unintelligible incantation.
Her eyes seemed like coals of fire,
dancing in their deep sockets, and her whole
appearance was altogether, or nearly supernatural.

“Who, and what are you, in the name of
God?” cried the Long Finne, starting up from
his straw.

“I am a being disinherited of all the rights,
and heir to all the wrongs to which humanity
is prone. I was born a princess in one quarter
of the globe—I was brought up in another,

a beast of burthen. I am here the slave of
man's will, the creature of his capricious tyranny.”
The voice of the apparition was hollow,
and rung like a muffled bell.

“And what brought thee here at this time
of the night,” replied the youth, “and such a
night too!”

“The thunder and the lightning, the storm
and the whirlwind, are my elements; night to
me is day; and when others sleep, the spirit
that is unseen in the morning, the guilty that
fear, and the injured that hate the light and the
face of man, go forth to warn the living, to indulge
the bitterness of their hearts, or to commit
new crimes.”

“Away!—I know thee now; thou art Bombie
of the Frizzled Head—I know thee now,” replied
the youth.

“And I too KNOW THEE,” hollowly rejoined
the figure—“I know thee, Long Finne. Thou
comest here for no good; thou art here to stab
the sleeping innocent—to engraft upon the tree
of my master's house the bitter fruit of guilt and
misery. I am sent here to prevent all this. I
come with food, and the means of freeing thee
from thy prison. Follow me, and go thy ways,
never to return.”

“I will stay here and die,” bitterly exclaimed
the fair youth. “I am an outcast from my native
land—a hunted deer, to whom neither the
woods, the waters, nor the air afford a refuge.
Whither shall I go? Nor white man nor red
man will shield me from that which follows me
everywhere—from the worm that never dies,
the fire that is never quenched. No—I will stay
here and perish.” He flung himself recklessly
on the floor, and covered his face with his
hands.

“Stay here and perish!” replied the Frizzled
Head, scornfully. “Thus does the coward
white man quail and whimper, when he hath
done that which his abject spirit dare not look
in the face. He that hath the courage to commit
a crime, should have the courage to face its
consequences. Coward, arise and follow me.”

“No—I will die here.”

“And perish hereafter,” cried the black mystery,
setting down a little basket beside the
youth. “Farewell; but be careful what thou
doest. Wherever thou goest I will follow;
whatever thou doest I shall know; and if, under
cover of night and solitude, when thou thinkest
that no mortal eye seeth thee, thou darest to do

ill, my eye shall be upon thee, and my spell wither
thy resolves. Beware!”

Thus saying, she departed, and sorry are we
to say, it was in a manner somewhat unworthy
her mysterious dignity; for she passed out at
the door, and locked it after her. The Long
Finne lay and ruminated for some time on what
he had seen and heard; but at length his curiosity
inspired him with the idea of examining
the basket, the contents of which drove every
thing else out of his head. And here we might
tamper with the reader's curiosity, and affect
that mystery with which our great prototype is
wont so unmercifully to torment his readers.
But we scorn all such vulgar arts of authorship,
and honestly confess that the Long Finne was
struck dumb by the sight of an excellent supper,
which he attacked with great vigour, after the
manner of men that have fasted much and prayed
little.

The visit of the Frizzled Head was, after this,
repeated nightly, and the supper with it, doubtless
with the connivance of dame Schwasch-buckler,
whose husband, being a great politician,
usually spent the first part of the night in
getting foxed at Master Oldale's shrine, and the
other part in sleeping himself sober at home.

In truth, the weeping blood of woman's heart
seldom beats with a stronger feeling of pity,
than it now began to do in the bosom of the fair
Christina. She was observed to be often at the
window of her chamber, which fronted the prison,
through whose bars she had a dim and
indistinct view of the tall, fair youth, pacing
backwards and forwards in his narrow bounds,
and sometimes stopping before the grates, where
he would lay his hand on his heart, and bow
his head profoundly, as if to thank her for her
charity to a poor wanderer. Sometimes, in the
evening, he would play on a little flageolet which
he managed exquisitely, and occasionally sing
portions of the tender and popular airs of her
country, among which she often distinguished the
following couplet:—

which seemed to her expressive of the triumph
of mind over time and circumstance.

Those who have studied the heart of womau,
and read in its ruddy pages how prone it is to
pity, and how naturally it passes from pity to a
warmer feeling, we trust will give us credit for
some little regard to probability, when we venture

to hint, that the little simple village girl had
not long indulged in the one, till she began to
feel the approaches of the other.

The moment she became aware of this change
in her feelings, all the pleasure she had hitherto
felt in administering, through the instrumentality
of Bombie, to the wants of the prisoner, vanished.
An indescribable sensation of awkward embarrassment
possessed her, whenever she applied
to the sybil to carry his daily supply. And
the blush which accompanied the application,
was the silent, yet sure testimony that she was
now acting under the impulses of a new feeling,
which she dared not avow.

The conduct of the Frizzled Head increased
this embarrassment.—The sybil every day discovered
more and more unwillingness to go on
her nightly errand of charity, and was perpetually
pouring forth mystical prophecies and
denunciations.

“I will not,” said she at last “I will not
pamper the wolf that he may be preserved to
devour the innocent lamb. I have seen what I
have seen, I know what I know. There is
peril in the earth, the sea, and the air, yet the
young see it not till it comes, and when it comes

they know not how to escape.—I will go to
the prison no more.”

“And the youth will be left to perish with
hunger,” replied the young damsel, sadly.

“Let him perish!” exclaimed the Frizzled Head.
“The guilty die, that the innocent may live; for
wickedness is the strength of the lion, and
the cunning of the tiger combined. Enough
can it accomplish of mischief without my assistance—I
will go no more.”

“In the name of Heaven, what meanest thou,”
asked the trembling girl, “by these fearful hints
of danger? Who is the wolf, and who the lamb,
that thou shouldst thus thwart me in my errand
of compassion?”

“I have seen what I have seen—I know what
I know,” replied the sybil. “The warning that
is given in time, is the word which is howled out
in the wilderness. Better were it for one of my
colour to be dumb than speak evil of one of thine.
But I have seen what I have seen—I know what
I know.”

This was all poor Christina could get out of
the old mystery, and that night the Long Finne
went supperless to his straw, with the thought
lying like lead upon his heart, that he was now
forgotten and forsaken by all the world.