第2章

One great heap had met a brighter destiny: they had fed the flames;thoughts meant to delight the world and endure for ages had perishedin a moment, and stirred not a single heart but mine. The story now tobe introduced, and another, chanced to be in kinder custody at thetime, and thus, by no conspicuous merits of their own, escapeddestruction.

The ladies, in consideration that I had never before intruded myperformances on them, by any but the legitimate medium, through thepress, consented to hear me read. I made them sit down on a moss-grownrock, close by the spot where we chose to believe that the deathtree had stood. After a little hesitation on my part, caused by adread of renewing my acquaintance with fantasies that had lost theircharm in the ceaseless flux of mind, I began the tale, which openeddarkly with the discovery of a murder.

A hundred years, and nearly half that time, have elapsed sincethe body of a murdered man was found, at about the distance of threemiles, on the old road to Boston. He lay in a solitary spot, on thebank of a small lake, which the severe frost of December had coveredwith a sheet of ice. Beneath this, it seemed to have been theintention of the murderer to conceal his victim in a chill andwatery grave, the ice being deeply hacked, perhaps with the weaponthat had slain him, though its solidity was too stubborn for thepatience of a man with blood upon his hand. The corpse thereforereclined on the earth, but was separated from the road by a thickgrowth of dwarf pines. There had been a slight fall of snow during thenight, and as if nature were shocked at the deed, and strove to hideit with her frozen tears, a little drifted heap had partly buriedthe body, and lay deepest over the pale dead face. An early traveller,whose dog had led him to the spot, ventured to uncover the features,but was affrighted by their expression. A look of evil and scornfultriumph had hardened on them, and made death so life-like and soterrible, that the beholder at once took flight, as swiftly as ifthe stiffened corpse would rise up and follow.

I read on, and identified the body as that of a young man, astranger in the country, but resident during several precedingmonths in the town which lay at our feet. The story described, at somelength, the excitement caused by the murder, the unavailing questafter the perpetrator, the funeral ceremonies, and other commonplacematters, in the course of which, I brought forward the personageswho were to move among the succeeding events. They were but three. Ayoung man and his sister; the former characterized by a diseasedimagination and morbid feelings; the latter, beautiful and virtuous,and instilling something of her own excellence into the wild heartof her brother, but not enough to cure the deep taint of his nature.

The third person was a wizard; a small, gray, withered man, withfiendish ingenuity in devising evil, and superhuman power to executeit, but senseless as an idiot and feebler than a child to all betterpurposes. The central scene of the story was an interview between thiswretch and Leonard Doane, in the wizard's hut, situated beneath arange of rocks at some distance from the town. They sat beside asmouldering fire, while a tempest of wintry rain was beating on theroof. The young man spoke of the closeness of the tie which united himand Alice, the consecrated fervor of their affection from childhoodupwards, their sense of lonely sufficiency to each other, because theyonly of their race had escaped death, in a night attack by theIndians. He related his discovery or suspicion of a secret sympathybetween his sister and Walter Brome, and told how a distemperedjealousy had maddened him. In the following passage, I threw aglimmering light on the mystery of the tale.