University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

Betimes the next morning, the trial of the
likely fellow Cupid came on in the High Court
of Elsingburgh; where presided the Heer in person,
assisted by Counsellors Langfanger and
Pfegel, and prompted in the mysteries of that
most mysterious of all sciences, the law, by six
folios of jurisprudence, each one nearly a foot
thick, and containing sufficient matter to confound
half the universe.

The prisoner was brought in by Lob Dotterel,
the gravity of whose deportment would
have done credit to a much greater man than
himself, and whose attention seemed equally divided
between Cupid, and a parcel of his old
enemies, the boys, who pressed forward to see
what was going to become of their sable playmate.
Among those who attended the trial was
Bombie of the Frizzled Head, whose agitation
was singularly contrasted with the apparently

stupid insensibility of her grandson. The prisoner,
in fact, seemed almost unconscious of his
situation, and stood with folded arms, staring
around the room with a vacant abstraction, as
if he had no concern in what was going forward.

Those important forms, so essential to the very
existence of lawyers, if not of the law, being
gone through, and the indictment read, charging
the prisoner, among other matters, with conspiring
against the life of the great Gustavus, Cupid
was asked the usual question of “guilty, or
not guilty?” He made no reply, and continued
obstinately silent, affording, in this respect, a singular
contrast to her of the Frizzled Head, who
it was impossible to keep quiet, though Lob
Dotterel cried “silence!” loud enough to be
heard across the broad river.

This refusal to plead had like to put a stop
to the whole business. Counsellor Langfanger
quoted, from a volume ten inches thick, a case
which went to establish the doctrine, that it was
impossible to try a criminal who would neither
confess his guilt, nor assert his innocence. The
Heer, on the contrary, produced a book, at least
two inches thicker than the other, and printed
in black-letter besides, which rebutted the authority
of Counsellor Langfanger's case, and held

it sound law to proceed upon the silence of a
criminal, in a case of this kind, as on a confession
of guilt. We shall not trouble the reader
with the arguments adduced in support of one
or other of these doctrines, but content ourselves
with stating the decision of the court, which was,
that they would wave insisting upon an answer,
and proceed with the trial.

The business was soon over, as at that time
there was not a single lawyer in the whole community
of Elsingburgh; a proof how much
this new world has improved since, there being
hardly a village of that size at present in the
country, that hath not at least two lawyers in it,
to puzzle the justices and confound the laws of
the land. Besides the frequent boasts of Cupid,
during the abode in the wilderness, one or
two persons deposed, that they had seen that
likely youth hovering about the magazine, and
at length stealing away in great haste, a few
moments before the explosion took place. He
was asked if he had any witnesses to produce in
his behalf, or any thing to say for himself, but he
remained silent as before. The proofs were so
clear, that there was little, if any, room for
doubt, and the court, after a few minutes consultation,
agreed in pronouncing him guilty,

and sentencing him to be hanged, for having
conspired with the savages, thereby occasioning
the destruction of the village, and the loss of several
lives.

This sentence was received by the prisoner
with the same immovable indifference he had
hitherto preserved; he made no gesture, he
moved not his lips, but continued, as before, to
gaze around, without appearing to notice any
thing. There was an awful silence throughout
the whole court, for there is something in the
annunciation of a disgraceful and violent death,
from the mouth of a judge, animated by no passion,
prejudice, or resentment, but standing
there as the oracle of the laws, the mouth-piece
of the community, to denounce against the offender
the just punishment of his crime, that
makes the most volatile serious, the most unthinking
shudder. Even the fluent Bombie
seemed for once quelled into silence, by the
shock of this awful dispensation, and she followed
her condemned grandson out of the court in
dead silence, her head bent down upon her bosom.

Between the condemnation of Cupid and the
time appointed for his execution, the Frizzled
Head employed herself in making interest with

Christina, the Long Finne, and, indeed, every
one whose intercession she thought might induce
the Heer to mitigate the punishment of her
grandson. But the Heer remained immovable
to the solicitations of his daughter and the Long
Finne. The crime was of too deep a die; the
example of pardon might be of the most pernicious
consequences; and the prerogative of
mercy ought never to be exercised to the endangeringthe
safety of the state, or the security
of life and property.

The day before the execution Bombie essayed,
for the last time, to move the Heer in behalf
of her grandson.

“Art thou resolved that he shall die on the
morrow?” said she.

“As surely as to-morrow shall come, so sure
as the sun shall rise, even so surely shall he never
live to see it go down,” replied the Heer.

“Thou hast forgotten, then, the services I have
done to thee and thine; thou no longer rememberest
that I have been to thy wife who is gone
a faithful handmaid; that I ministered to her in
sickness and in health, and that, when she died,
she bequeathed me to thy care and protection:
thou hast forgot that it was I that bore thy infant
daughter in my arms, when her own limbs would

not support her; that it was I who, when her
mother died, did all I could to supply the place
of a mother to her; and that I have watched,
and do still watch, over the welfare of thy child,
even while thou art dooming mine to a shameful
death. Thou hast forgotten all this, Heer!”

“Say not so,” rejoined the Heer, “for so it
is not. I remember thou hast been to me and
mine a faithful slave, and I am grateful for
thy kindness, but—”

“But what?” interrupted the Frizzled Head.
“Thou wouldst strive to persuade me of thy
good will, while thou refusest me the last request
I shall ever make thee. Of what use is
thy gratitude to me, if thou wilt not permit it to
sway thy actions? what avails it, if, when thou
inffictest a wound of death, thou shalt whine in
my ear, that thou art sorry for it? Say that thou
wilt spare his life, and I will believe in thy gratitude.”

“If the risk of sparing him were mine alone,”
said the Heer, “I would not hesitate; but I am
not acting for myself. The safety of my people
depends upon the punishment of those who conspire
to destroy them, as did thy grandson.
Were I to let him loose, he might again occasion
the destruction of our village, and how then

should I answer it to my God, my kind, or
my people?”

“Yes!” retorted the Frizzled Head, with bitterness,
“yes! such is the code and the heart of
the white-man. His duties are ever conflicting
with each other, and even the precepts of forgiveness,
inculcated by the book which he pretends
came directly from heaven, must yield to
laws of his own making. As a christian, it is
his duty to pardon; as a legislator, to punish
offences. He cannot love his country without
being unjust to his friends, nor fulfil his duties
to the public, but at the sacrifice of kindred affection,
and domestic ties. But, once more—
once more, and for the last time, art thou resolved,
Heer?”

“I am.”

“Fixed as fate?”

“As I live, I swear that, so far as rests with
me, he shall pay the forfeit of his dark and malignant
crime, before mid-day to-morrow. Trouble
me no more—I am deaf to thy petition.”

“Then thus may it be with thy petitions, now,
henceforth, and for ever more, whether addressed
to thy fellow creatures, or to Him who made
us all. If thou callest for sympathy, mayst
thou meet with scorn; if thou askest for kindness,

mayst thou be answered with the bitterness
of contumely; if thou criest out for bread,
mayst thou receive a stone; and if, in the
last hour of thy existence, struggling between
life and death, time and eternity, fearing, hoping,
trembling, expiring, thou shalt address thy last
prayer for pardon to the throne of thy Maker,
may he turn a deaf ear, as thou hast done to
mine.”

So saying, she departed from the presence of
the Heer, and took her way through the village,
stopping at every house, and madly calling on
the inhabitants to interfere, and rescue her
grandson from what she called the tyranny of
the Governor. But her exhortations produced
little or no effect. The people had suffered too
much from the treasonable practices of Cupid,
to feel any sympathy for him; and they were
so accustomed to consider the declamations of
Bombie of the Frizzled Head as little better
than mysterious parables, coming from the
mouth of one who possessed little in common with
ordinary mortals, that few paid much attention to
her from any other motive than fear.

Early the next morning there was a great
bustle observed in the village, for this was the
morning big with the fate of Bombie's grandson.

This was the first example of a capital
punishment that ever occurred in Elsingburgh,
and the effect was proportionably profound.
Every body seemed agitated and in motion, yet
nothing was doing. All avocations were suspended,
and, although there was a great deal of
talking, it was all in whispers. A certain deep
impression of horror reigned all around, and the
imagination was filled with nothing but images
of death. Yet such is the apparent inconsistency
of human nature, that there was not a soul in
the whole village, except the Heer's family,
that was capable of motion, who did not
attend the execution of Cupid. Men, women,
and children, impelled by that mysterious
fascination which draws the bird to
the fang of the rattle-snake, and sometimes impels
the human being to precipitate himself from
the brow of the precipice, poured forth, on this
occasion, to witness what struck them with horror
in the exhibition, and made the night terrible
for a long while afterwards. The people of
the country, and those who live in retired villages,
see so little of novelty, that they are extremely
fond of sights, and are almost equally attracted
by any thing that breaks in upon the monotony
of their existence. It is not that people love
to witness spectacles of horror, or the effusion of
human blood, but that they want excitement, and
often seek it after a strange manner.

The goblin Cupid had not spoke, since the
moment of his apprehension by Lob Dotterel.
To the exhortations of Dominie Kanttwell, as
well as the lamentations of his grandmother, he
turned a deaf ear; and it was impossible to discover,
by any outward indications, whether terror
or obstinacy was at the bottom of this apparent
insensibility. When conducted to the foot
of the gallows, he looked about as if he were rather
a spectator than an actor in the scene; nor
did the agonies of the poor old sybil, his grandmother,
who, when she came to take leave of
him, discovered a degree of intense feeling, that
drew a tear from many an eye, make the least
impression upon him, or draw forth one single
returning endearment.

“Farewell, my son,” said she, giving him a last
embrace; “despised, deformed being of a despised
race, farewell. I have loved thee the more, for
that thou wert hated by all the world—contemned
by the most despicable of the white-man's race—
hooted at by the very beggar that slept in the
sun by the road-side—and every where, and at
all times, the sport of capricious power. Why

should I lament thee? Thou art going where,
even according to the creed of thy oppressors,
all will be equal, and where, I say, thou wilt have
thy turn to play the master. Yes! I see it—I
feel it—I know it! Each dog shall have his
day, and why not so with man? Millions of
people live and die in the belief, that the ox
which is driven, the horse that is rode, the
sheep that is eaten by man, shall, in some future
revolution of time, drive, ride, and eat the tyrant
who did even so unto them. And shall
not our race have their turn? It must be so,
here or hereafter.”

The Frizzled Head was waxing sublime and
incomprehensible apace, when Lob Dotterel apprized
her, that if she had any thing more to
say to the poor deformed creature, she must say
it soon, as his last moment was come.

The Snow Ball turned herself about, looked
all around the circle with a scrutinizing eye,
and said, as it were to herself, “he is not here.”
Then, as if at that moment, for the first time,
struck with that feeling of absolute and inevitatable
certainty, under which the agony of the
heart is quelled for a time, and hope sinks into
listless despondency, she quietly retired a little
way from the gallows, and stood immovable,

leaning on her stick. She saw the fatal knot
tied; the cap, which shut out time, and enveloped
eternity, drawn over his eyes; heard the last
exhortation, the hymn that was to waft his soul
no one knew where, without moving a muscle, or
uttering a word. The noise of the cart, as it
drew from under the fatal tree, seemed for a moment
to shake her old crazy frame. She gazed for
a minute, while her grandson was hanging in
the mid air, and was silent, till the total cessation
of motion in his limbs announced that all
was over. Then, letting fall her stick, clasping
her old withered hands, and raising her eyes to
heaven, she shrieked out—

“'Tis done—and may all the cruel, accursed
race of the white-man thus perish, as thou, my
poor boy, hast perished. Yes! yes! ye proud,
upstart race, the time shall come, it shall surely
come, when the pile of oppression ye have reared
to the clouds shall fall, and crush your own
heads. Black-men and red-men, all colours,
shall combine against your pale, white race;
and the children of the master shall become the
bondsmen of the posterity of the slave! I say
it—I, that am at this moment standing scarce
nearer to time than to eternity—I, that am at
this moment shaking hands with death, and my

body and spirit taking their last leave of each
other—I say it—and I say my last.”

The tough old heart strings that had so often
been tested, in the hard gales of life, now
cracked, and gave way; the strong frame that
had endured so many hardships, all at once refused
to endure any more, and in less than a
minute after Bombie uttered these words she
sunk to the ground, overwhelmed by the agony
of her feelings.

Numbers flocked around, as is usual in
these cases, and one of the crowd exclaimed to
the others, “raise her up.” “Raise her!” repeated
the Frizzled Head, the last energies of
life trembling on her tongue—“Raise her!”
none but Him who broke down the eternal barriers
between the quick and the dead; who called
at the mouth of the sepulchre, and awoke
the sleeping dust; who triumphed over death
and the grave, can raise this withered old trunk.
The hour is come—it is past. Wait, boy—I
come.” Her eyes closed, and she departed to a
better world.

The crowd dispersed, overwhelmed with terror;
and that night there was little sleep in the village
of Elsingburgh. The good housewife lay wakeful
and afraid by the side of her tired husband,

will be nothing left of the red-men but their
name, and their graves.”

When the Rolling Thunder ceased, Dominie
Kanttwell arose and made a speech, which,
however zealous and well meant, only served to
exasperate the red kings. He treated their ancient
belief with scorn; insulted their feelings
of national pride; scoffed at their modes of
thinking and acting; and drew a mortifying
contrast betwixt the ignorant barbarian roaming
the woods, and the white-man enjoying the
comfort and security of civilized life. The surrounding
Indians began to murmur; then to
gnash their teeth, and finally many of them,
starting up, seized their tomakawks, and uttered
the war-whoop. The Heer and his party were
now in imminent danger of falling victims to the
fury of the moment. But the Rolling Thunder
arose, and, waving his hand for silence, spoke as
follows:—

“Red-men!—hear me! The Long Knives
came here in peace, so let them depart. Let
us not imitate their treachery, by taking advantage
of their confidence to destroy them. Behold!
I here extinguish the pipe of peace; I
break the belt of wampum, that was the symbol
of our being friends, and dig up the buried