University of Virginia Library

19. XIX.
THE CAVERN OF THE CASCADE.

ENTERING the woods on their strange errand,
Guy and Christina had not proceeded far by the
brook-side when the seeress paused. It was a
dismal place. Dark hemlocks and spruces thickly overshadowed
it. Below it opened a black ravine, into which the
brook rushed with hollow murmurs. On the brink was a
huge bowlder overgrown with lichens. A birch-tree was
near by. Between the rock and the birch Christina stood,
her features pallid, her hands cold and rigidly closed, her
body shudderingly convulsed.

“This is the spot,” she said in a voice unlike her own.
“Here dig.”

Guy leaned upon his spade by the rock, watching her,
appalled by her preternatural aspect and the sepulchral significance
of her words. He had no heart for the work: he
did not move to obey.

“Dig!” she repeated with authority. “Under her
feet” — as if it were another speaking — “lie the bones of

murdered Martin. At her side stands the living Martin,
together with a numerous company who have brought you
here for this work. Lose no time, but dig!”

Guy marked the spot with the spade. She stepped aside,
and, after a few spasmodic movements, threw off the influences
that were upon her.

“It is awful!” said she. “Can you stand there, and feel
nothing?”

“I feel creeping sensations not agreeable to the flesh. Let
the dead rest.”

“Do you believe any thing in it?” whispered Christina,
pale and excited.

“Not much. I can't discover that the ground here has
ever been disturbed. We'll see.” Guy thrust in the
spade. It struck solid stone. “There is the ledge,” said
he, with a feeling of relief. “There is not depth enough of
soil for a grave.”

“Are we a couple of fools?” cried Christina. “'Tis the
first time I have ever had such clear and strong impressions,
and been deceived. Be sure of the ledge.”

He thrust in the spade again and again, and still found,
a few inches beneath the surface of the soil, a sub-surface of
rock. Christina sank upon the ground, dismayed.

“What do you think of me?”

“I think you have been mistaken; and I am not sorry,”
he frankly answered.

“Oh! but am I not guilty of a shallow piece of imposture?”

she said bitterly. “Come away. Once duped is
enough. I shall never trust my impressions again. I am
angry and ashamed.”

“Hello!” said Guy. He had struck in the spade in
another place. “There is no ledge here!”

He threw off the dirt rapidly, and discovered that what he
had mistaken for the ledge was only a large flat stone. He
now removed his coat, and fell to work in earnest. The slab
was soon tumbled over upon the ground. It was tolerably
easy digging for about a foot farther; when he struck another
slab, similar to the first, but of smaller dimensions. From
this he scraped the dirt, and stopped to rest.

“You promised, that, while I was digging, you would tell
me how you came by the watch.”

“There was not much witchraft about that. I saw Jack
flying with something into the woods. He sat on a limb, and
tried to break the chain. `Come here, Jack!' said I; and
immediately he flew towards me, and dropped the watch at
my feet.”

“But there was witchcraft in it!” exclaimed Guy. “Such
things happen only to you. Birds and beasts, and spirits
of the earth and air, do your bidding. Christina, I as firmly
believe that the dead boy lies under this stone as that I stand
on it!”

He recommenced digging. The second slab was soon taken
out. Beneath it the soil was soft and light. He threw up
a fragment of rotten cloth. Whilst Christina was examining
it, he continued to dig. Suddenly he stopped.

“Never any thing more in this world or the next shall
astonish me! I believe in ghosts and prophecy! Look!”

“What is it? cried Christina. “Hair?”

“Human hair, Christina!”

“Horrible! horrible!”

“Just a little tuft,” said Guy; “once flaxen, and once a
wavy lock on Martin's head! Once his mother combed and
curled it, and thought it pretty. I am sick at heart.”

“Let us be satisfied!” she whispered.

“I am satisfied. Why uncover this dreadful thing? Let's
throw back the dirt, go home, and hold our tongues.”

“Scrape away a little dirt there;” and she dropped a
pebble.

The spade rubbed something hard, which was not stone.

Shortly after, Guy got up out of the pit, and leaned against
the rock. For a long time they did not speak, but only
looked at each other. The wind, rising, shook the great trees
over them, and the brook still fell with sullen plash into the
ravine.

“Is it not dreadful?” said Christina.

“I was thinking of another who stood here once; of the
night when he `bore his dread burden down here,'” said Guy.
“There was no moon. The woods were black and awful.
He dug in the darkness to the dirge of the wind and the
water. It sounded to him like the wail of a lost soul.”

“I pity him!” said Christina. “But how short-sighted!
Why didn't he tumble the body down into the ravine? There

it might never have been discovered; or, if it had been, it
would have appeared that the boy had fallen from the bank,
and been killed.”

“Perhaps he brought it here with that purpose. Perhaps
he flung it down there, and fled. But the staring horror,
naked to the eye of God, would not let him rest. Night and
day it haunted him; day and night he saw it tumbled down
there in the water among the rocks. He came at last, and
covered it up out of sight, and placed over it these slabs to
prevent the wild beasts from digging it up. Perhaps the act
of burial did, in some sort, relieve his soul. I hope it did.
What a heart he must carry in his bosom, at the best!”

“In his heart, not here, the dead is buried!” sighed
Christina.

“Not for all the world would I have such a sepulchre in
my breast!” Guy answered.

After that he shovelled back the earth; but, instead of replacing
the stones as he had found them, he set them up, one
at the head, the other at the foot, of the little grave.

“It is finished!” said Christina. “Let us wash our
hands of this corruption, and cleanse our minds of the memory
of it.”

“Come with me,” said Guy. “I know a rare spot.
The very atmosphere of it is a bath to the soul.”

They descended the hillside along by the ravine. A
furlong or two below, the stream fell a bright cascade into a
misty cavern. This they entered, and sat down, with the

cool vapor of the cascade drifting past them, and the agitated
waters of the basin rippling to their feet. They did not talk;
but, having washed their hands, they sat silent in the roar of
the waterfall. Suddenly Christina knelt upon the wet sand.

“You strange creature!” cried Guy: “what are you there
for? Get up!”

She looked up at him with a pale, cold face, half veiled in
mist.

“Shall I not obey Heaven and my own soul?” she asked.

He was silent, awed by the white and illumined countenance.

She bared his feet, and washed them in the water of the
basin, and wiped them with the hair of her head.

“Woman! woman! what are you doing to me?”

Her clothes wet, her hair all heavy and tangled, she bowed
down her face, and kissed his right foot. A sharp thrill
pierced his soul at that kiss. No taint of human passion
touched him. He shuddered with an ineffable sense of divine
mystery and love. Upon the head bowed before him
he laid his hand.

“O God our Father! O Christ our Saviour!” he prayed
aloud, “teach us the meaning of these things!”

And, bending over, he kissed Christina's forehead.

Then Lucy, stung to wildness, her soul reeling and sick,
crept away, thinking that she would lie down somewhere in
the woods, and die.