University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER XI.

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 appeared.

John was an old man who had been well known to two or
three successive generations in the village. He had not
strength or health 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 cottage 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
credulities 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 that 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 was 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 full hand too, and she stalked 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 under 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 colored servant girl, who stood panic-struck and
motionless; her dread of her mistress's 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 head 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 space is
empty where it should be, Jane—quite empty, and sometime
aching!”

Jane felt that the poor woman was not a subject of 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-caten 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 neighbors, 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 it had contained 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 seemingly, 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 favorite methodist
hymn—

Mrs. Wilson turned to Jane, and with that disposition
which such persons have when any evil befalls 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 at which, in spite of her aunt's awful presence,
Jane had laughed heartily, was not at all adapted 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 old John'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, their hour, to be keeping their merry revel 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
lay 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 farther extremity of
the fallen trunk, she sprang without difficulty over the few
fect of water between her and the dry sand of the shore.

“That's well done!” exclaimed crazy Bet, starting up
from a mound in the form of a grave. “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 deep bank to 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 is a prayer. 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, 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. I have had Guerdeen, but innocence is
stronger than a regiment of them! 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 company about them in
the churchyard; 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 set 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[3] 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
choaked 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 came 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 might worship in this temple.

“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 quits
till I come.”

They now turned into the wood by a narrow pathway,
whose entrance laid under the shadow of two young beach trees:
crazy Bet paused—“See ye these, child,” said she, pointing
to the trees, “I know 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) died
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
tormenter: by the light of the moon it's loosened. You 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?”[4]

“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 believed 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, she followed
Bet, who took no note of her scruples. They now entered a
defile, which apparently 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 between the rocks
it was impossible to surmount; and Jane felt that she was
passing over 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 resolutely, 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
foothold 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 farther 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 wrapped 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 lighted on the branch she still
held in her hand. “Oh!” exclaimed she, “messenger of
love and 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, them jinglements 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 which 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.