eyes for confirmation of their suspicions. And savage croak along a range of cliffs. The there was whispering about things, that, though whole multitude stood stock-still at that carin themselves light as air, seemed now charged rion-sound. The guide said shudderingly, in with hideous import; and then arose sacred a low hurried voice, "See, see-that is her appeals to Heaven's eternal justice, horridly mantle"-and there indeed Margaret lay, all ningled with oaths and curses; and all the in a heap, maimed, mangled, murdered, with crowd, springing to their feet, pronounced, a hundred gashes. The corpse seemed as if "that no other but he could be the murderer." it had been baked in frost, and was embedded It was remembered now, that for months past Margaret Burnside had often looked melancholy-that her visits had been less frequent to Moorside; and one person in the crowd said, that a few weeks ago she had come upon them suddenly in a retired place, when Margaret was weeping bitterly, and Ludovic tossing his arms, seemingly in wrath and distraction. All agreed that of late he had led a disturbed and reckless life-and that something dark and suspicious had hung about him, wherever he went, as if he were haunted by an evil conscience. But did not strange men sometimes pass through the Moor -squalid mendicants, robber-like, from the faroff city-one by one, yet seemingly belonging to the same gang-with bludgeons in their hands-half-naked, and often drunken in their hunger, as at the doors of lonesome houses they demanded alms; or more like foot-pads than beggars, with stern gestures, rising up from the ditches on the way-side, stopped the frightened women and children going upon errands, and thanklessly received pence from the poor? One of them must have been the murderer! But then, again, the whole tide of suspicion would set in upon Ludovic-her lover; for the darker and more dreadful the guilt, the more welcome is it to the fears of the imagination when its waking dreams are floating in blood.

in coagulated blood. Shreds and patches of her dress, torn away from her bosom, bestrewed the bushes-for many yards round about, there had been the trampling of feet, and a long lock of hair that had been torn from her temples, with the dews yet unmelted on it, was lying upon a plant of broom, a little way from the corpse. The first to lift the body from the horrid bed was Gilbert Adamson. He had been long familiar with death in all its ghastliness, and all had now looked to him-forgetting for the moment that he was the father of the murderer-to perform the task from which they recoiled in horror. Resting on one knee, he placed the corpse on the other-and who could have believed, that even the most violent and cruel death could have wrought such a change on a face once so beautiful! All was distortion-and terrible it was to see the dim glazed eyes, fixedly open, and the orbs insensible to the strong sun that smote her face white as snow among the streaks as if left by bloody fingers! Her throat was all discoloured-and a silk handkerchief twisted into a cord, that had manifestly been used in the murder, was of a redder hue than when it had veiled her breast. No one knows what horror his eyes are able to look on, till they are tried. A circle of stupified gazers was drawn by a horrid fascination closer and closer round the corpse-and women stood A tall figure came forward from the porch, there holding children by the hands, and faintand all was silence when the congregationed not, but observed the sight, and shuddered beheld the Father of the suspected criminal. He stood still as a tree in a calm day-trunk, limbs, moved not-and his gray head was uncovered. He then stretched out his arm, not in an imploring, but in a commanding attitude, and essayed to speak; but his white lips quivered, and his tongue refused its office. At last, almost fiercely, he uttered, "Who dares denounce my son?" and like the growling thunder, the crowd cried, "All-all-he is the murderer!" Some said that the old man smiled; but it could have been but a convulsion of the features-outraged nature's wrungout and writhing expression of disdain, to show how a father's love brooks the cruelty of foolish falsehood and injustice.

without shrieking, and stood there all dumb as ghosts. But the body was now borne along by many hands-at first none knew in what direction, till many voices muttered, “To Moorside-to Moorside"-and in an hour it was laid on the bed in which Margaret Burnside had so often slept with her beloved little Ann in her bosom.

The hand of some one had thrown a cloth over the corpse. The room was filled with people—but all their power and capacity of horror had been exhausted-and the silence was now almost like that which attends a natural death, when all the neighbours are assembled for the funeral. Alice, with little Ann beside her, kneeled at the bed, nor feared to lean her head close to the covered corpse-sobbing out syllables that showed how passionately she prayed

Men, women, and children—all whom grief and horror had not made helpless-moved away towards the Moor-the woman who had and that she and her little niece—and, oh! seen the sight leading the way; for now her for that unhappy father-were delivering themwhole strength had returned to her, and she selves up into the hands of God. The father was drawn and driven by an irresistible pas- knelt not-neither did he sit down-nor move sion to look again at what had almost de--nor groan-but stood at the foot of the bed, stroyed her judgment. Now they were miles from the kirk, and over some brushwood, at the edge of a morass some distance from the common footpath, crows were seen diving and careering in the air, and a raven flapping suddenly out of the covert, sailed away with a

with arms folded almost sternly-and with eyes fixed on the sheet, in which there seemed to be neither ruth nor dread-but only an austere composure, which were it indeed but resignation to that dismal decree of Providence, had been most sublime-but who can see into

the heart of a man either righteous or wicked, and know what may be passing there, breathed from the gates of heaven or of hell!

Soon as the body had been found, shepherds and herdsmen, fleet of foot as the deer, had set off to scour the country far and wide, hill and glen, mountain and morass, moor and wood, for the murderer. If he be on the face of the earth, and not self-plunged in despairing suicide into some quagmire, he will be found for all the population of many districts are now afoot, and precipices are clomb till now brushed but by the falcons. A figure, like that of a man, is seen by some of the hunters from a hill-top, lying among the stones by the side of a solitary loch. They separate, and descend upon him, and then gathering in, they behold the man whom they seek-Ludovic Adamson, the murderer.

men who now held him by the arm; and all assembled then exclaimed, "Guilty, guiltythat one word will hang him! Oh, pity, pity, for his father and poor sister-this will break their hearts!" Appalled, yet firm of foot, the prisoner forced his way into the house, and turning, in his confusion, into the chamber on the left, there he beheld the corpse of the murdered on the bed-for the sheet had been removedas yet not laid out, and disfigured and deformed just as she had been found on the moor, in the same misshapen heap of death! One long insane glare-one shriek, as if all his heartstrings at once had burst-and then down fell the strong man on the floor like lead. One trial was past which no human hardihood could endure-another, and yet another awaits him; but them he will bear as the guilty brave have often borne them, and the most searching eye shall not see him quail at the bar or on the scaffold.

His face is pale and haggard-yet flushed as if by a fever centered in his heart. That is no dress for the Sabbath-day-soiled and They lifted the stricken wretch from the savage-looking-and giving to the eyes that floor, placed him in a chair, and held him upsearch an assurance of guilt. He starts to his right, till he should revive from the fit. And feet, as they think, like some wild beast sur- he soon did revive; for health flowed in all prised in his lair, and gathering itself up to his veins, and he had the strength of a giant. fight or fly. But-strange enormity-a Bible But when his senses returned, there was none is in his hand! And the shepherd who first to pity him; for the shock had given an exseized him, taking the book out of his grasp, pression of guilty horror to all his looks, and, looks into the page, and reads, "Whoever shed- like a man walking in his sleep under the deth man's blood, by man shall his blood be temptation of some dreadful dream, he moved surely shed." On a leaf is written, in her own with fixed eyes towards the bed, and looking at well-known hand, "The gift of Margaret Burn- the corpse, gobbled in hideous laughter, and side!" Not a word is said by his captors- then wept and tore his hair like a distracted they offer no needless violence-no indignities woman or child. Then he stooped down as he -but answer all inquiries of surprise and as- would kiss the face, but staggered back, and, tonishment (Oh! can one so young be so hard-covering his eyes with his hands, uttered such ened in wickedness!) by a stern silence, and a groan as is sometimes heard rending the upbraiding eyes, that like daggers must stab sinner's breast when the avenging Furies are his heart. At last he walks doggedly and sul-upon him in his dreams. All who heard it lenly along, and refuses to speak-yet his felt that he was guilty; and there was a fierce tread is firm-there is no want of composure cry through the room of "Make him touch the in his face-now that the first passion of fear body, and if he be the murderer, it will bleed!" or anger has left it; and now that they have Fear not, Ludovic, to touch it, my boy," the murderer in their clutch, some begin al- said his father; "bleed afresh it will not, for most to pity him, and others to believe, or at thou art innocent: and savage though now least to hope, that he may be innocent. As yet they be who once were proud to be thy friends, they have said not a word of the crime of even they will believe thee guiltless when the which they accuse him; but let him try to mas- corpse refuses to bear witness against thee, ter the expression of his voice and his eyes as and not a drop leaves its quiet heart!" But he may, guilt is in those stealthy glances- his son spake not a word, nor did he seem to guilt is in those reckless tones. And why does know that his father had spoken; but he sufbe seek to hide his right hand in his bosom? fered himself to be led passively towards the And whatever he may affect to say-they ask bed. One of the bystanders took his hand and him not-most certainly that stain on his shirt-placed it on the naked breast, when out of the collar is blood. But now they are at Moorside.

There is still a great crowd all round about the house in the garden—and at the door-and a troubled cry announces that the criminal has been taken, and is close at hand. His father meets him at the gate; and, kneeling down, holds up his clasped hands, and says, "My son, if thou art guilty, confess, and die." The criminal angrily waves his father aside, and walks towards the door. "Fools! fools! what mean ye by this? What crime has been committed? And how dare ye to think me the criminal? Am I like a murderer ?"-" We never spoke to him of the murder-we never spoke to him of the murder!" cried one of the

corners of the teeth-clenched mouth, and out
of the swollen nostrils, two or three blood-drops
visibly oozed; and a sort of shrieking shout
declared the sacred faith of all the crowd in
the dreadful ordeal. "What body is this? 'tis
all over blood!" said the prisoner, looking with
an idiot vacancy on the faces that surrounded
him. But now the sheriff of the county en-
tered the room, along with some officers of
justice, and he was spared any further shocks
from that old saving superstition. His wrists
soon after were manacled. These were all the
words he had uttered since he recovered from
the fit; and he seemed now in a state of
stupor.

Ludovic Adamson, after examination of wit
Ꭰ

nesses who crowded against him from many | perpetrated, nor that wretched sinner's soul unexpected quarters, was committed that very given to perdition. Yet others had gentler and Sabbath night to prison on a charge of murder. humaner thoughts. They remembered him On the Tuesday following, the remains of Mar- walking along God-supported beneath the bier garet Burnside were interred. All the parish and at the mouth of the grave-and feared were at the funeral. In Scotland it is not cus- to look on that head-formerly grizzled, but tomary for females to join in the last simple now quite gray-when on the very first Sabceremonies of death. But in this case they bath after the murder he took his place in the did; and all her scholars, in the same white elder's seat, and was able to stand up, along dresses in which they used to walk with her with the rest of the congregation, when the at their head into the kirk on Sabbaths, followed | minister prayed for peace to his soul, and the bier. Alice and little Ann were there, hoped for the deliverance out of jeopardy of nearest the coffin, and the father of him who him now lying in bonds. A low Amen went had wrought all this wo was one of its sup- all round the kirk at these words; for the most porters. The head of the murdered girl rest- hopeless called to mind that maxim of law, ed, it might be said, on his shoulder-but none equity, and justice-that every man under accan know the strength which God gives to his cusation of crime should be held innocent till servants and all present felt for him, as he he is proved to be guilty. Nay, a human tribuwalked steadily under that dismal burden, a nal might condemn him, and yet might he stand pity, and even an affection, which they had acquitted before the tribunal of God. been unable to yield to him ere he had been There were various accounts of the behaso sorely tried. The Ladies from the Castle viour of the prisoner. Some said that he was were among the other mourners, and stood by desperately hardened-others, sunk in sullen the open grave. A sunnier day had never apathy and indifference—and one or two pershone from heaven, and that very grave itself sons belonging to the parish who had seen partook of the brightness, as the coffin-with him, declared that he seemed to care not for the gilt letters," Margaret Burnside, Aged 18" himself, but to be plunged in profound melan-was let down, and in the darkness below choly for the fate of Margaret Burnside, whose disappeared. No flowers were sprinkled there name he involuntarily mentioned, and then -nor afterwards planted on the turf-vain bowed his head on his knees and wept. His offerings of unavailing sorrow! But in that guilt he neither admitted at that interview, nor nook-beside the bodies of her poor parents- denied; but he confessed that some circumshe was left for the grass to grow over her, as stances bore hard against him, and that he was over the other humble dead; and nothing but prepared for the event of his trial-condemnathe very simplest headstone was placed there, tion and death. "But if you are not guilty, with a sentence from Scripture below the name. Ludovic, who can be the murderer? Not the There was less weeping, less sobbing, than at slightest shade of suspicion has fallen on any many other funerals; for as sure as Mercy other person—and did not, alas! the body bleed ruled the skies, all believed that she was there when"- -The unhappy wretch sprang up -all knew it, just as if the gates of heaven from the bed, it was said, at these words, and had opened and showed her a white-robed hurried like a madman back and forward along spirit at the right hand of the throne. And the stone floor of his cell. "Yea-yea!" at why should any rueful lamentation have been last he cried, "the mouth and nostrils of my wailed over the senseless dust? But on the Margaret did indeed bleed when they pressed way home over the hills, and in the hush of down my hand on her cold bosom. It is God's evening beside their hearths, and in the still-truth!" "God's truth ?"-" Yes-God's truth. ness of night on their beds-all-young and I saw first one drop, and then another, trickle old-all did nothing but weep! towards me-and I prayed to our Saviour to

For weeks-such was the pity, grief, and wipe them off before other eyes might behold awe inspired by this portentous crime and la- the dreadful witnesses against me; but at that mentable calamity, that all the domestic on-hour Heaven was most unmerciful-for those goings in all the houses far and wide, were two small drops-as all of you saw-soon bemelancholy and mournful, as if the country had been fearing a visitation of the plague. Sin, it was felt, had brought not only sorrow on the parish, but shame that ages would not wipe away; and strangers, as they travelled through the moor, would point the place where the foulest murder had been committed in all the annals of crime. As for the family at Moorside, the daughter had their boundless compassion, though no eye had seen her since the funeral; but people, in speaking of the father, would still shake their heads, and put their fingers to their lips, and say to one another in whispers, that Gilbert Adamson had once been a bold, bad man-that his religion, In spite of all his repulsive austerity, wore not the aspect of truth-and that, had he held a stricter and a stronger hand on the errors of nis misguided son, this foul deed had not been

came a very stream-and all her face, neck, and breast-you saw it as well as I miserable -were at last drenched in blood. Then I may have confessed that I was guilty-did I, or did I not, confess it? Tell me for I remember nothing distinctly ;—but if I did—the judgment of offended Heaven, then punishing me for my sins, had made me worse than mad-and so had all your abhorrent eyes; and, men, if I did confess, it was the cruelty of God that drove me to it-and your cruelty-which was great; for no pity had any one for me that day, though Margaret Burnside lay before me a murdered corpse-and a hoarse whisper came to my ear urging me to confess-I well believe from no human lips, but from the Father of Lies, who, at that hour, was suffered to leave the pit to ensnare my soul." Such was said to have been the main sense of what he uttered in the

presence of two or three who had formerly | heart was not yet wholly broken; and it was been among his most intimate friends, and who believed that, for years, he might outlive the knew not, on leaving his cell and coming into blow that at first had seemed more than a the open air, whether to think him innocent or mortal man might bear and be! Yet that his guilty. As long as they thought they saw his wo, though hidden, was dismal, all erelong eyes regarding them, and that they heard his knew, from certain tokens that intrenched his voice speaking, they believed him innocent; face-cheeks shrunk and fallen-brow not so but when the expression of the tone of his much furrowed as scarred, eyes quenched, voice, and of the look of his eyes-which they hair thinner and thinner far, as if he himself had felt belonged to innocence-died away had torn it away in handfuls during the solifrom their memory-then arose against him tude of midnight-and now absolutely as white the strong, strange, circumstantial evidence, as snow; and over the whole man an indewhich, wisely or unwisely-lawyers and judges scribable ancientness far beyond his yearshave said cannot lie-and then, in their hearts, though they were many, and most of them had one and all of them pronounced him guilty. been passed in torrid climes-all showed how grief has its agonies as destructive as those of guilt, and those the most wasting when they work in the heart and in the brain, unrelieved by the shedding of one single tear-when the very soul turns dry as dust, and life is imprisoned, rather than mingled, in the decaying -the mouldering body!

46

to denote that there were hopes of his acquit- | been picked up near the body, was sworn to tal-yet, if such hopes there were, they were be in his handwriting; and though the meandeadened by the recollection of the calm, clear, ing of the words-yet legible-was obscure, logical address to the jury by the counsel for they seemed to express a request that Margaret the crown, and destroyed by the judge's charge, would meet him on the moor on that Saturday which amounted almost to demonstration of afternoon she was murdered. The words guilt, and concluded with a confession due to "Saturday"-"meet me"-"last time,”—were his oath and conscience, that he saw not how not indistinct, and the paper was of the same the jury could do their duty to their Creator quality and colour with some found in a drawer and their fellow-creatures, but by returning one in his bed-room at Moorside. It was proved verdict. They retired to consider it; and, dur- that he had been drinking with some dissolute ing a deathlike silence, all eyes were bent on persons-poachers and the like-in a public a deathlike image. house in a neighbouring parish all Saturday, It had appeared in evidence, that the murder till well on in the afternoon, when he left them had been committed, at least all the gashes in- in a state of intoxication-and was then seen flicted-for there were also finger-marks of running along the hill side in the direction of strangulation-with a bill-hook, such as for- the moor. Where he passed the night between esters use in lopping trees; and several wit- the Saturday and the Sabbath, he could give nesses swore that the bill-hook which was no account, except once when unasked, and as shown them, stained with blood, and with hair if speaking to himself, he was overheard by sticking on the haft-belonged to Ludovic the jailer to mutter, "Oh! that fatal night-that Adamson. It was also given in evidence- fatal night!" And then, when suddenly interthough some doubts rested on the nature of the rogated, "Where were you?" he answered, precise words that on that day, in the room Asleep on the hill;" and immediately relapsed with the corpse, he had given a wild and in- into a state of mental abstraction. These were coherent denial to the question then put to him the chief circumstances against him, which his in the din, "What he had done with the bill- counsel had striven to explain away. That hook?" Nobody had seen it in his possession most eloquent person dwelt with affecting since the spring before; but it had been found, | earnestness on the wickedness of putting any after several weeks' search, in a hag in the evil construction on the distracted behaviour moss, in the direction that he would have most of the wretched man when brought without probably taken-had he been the murderer- warning upon the sudden sight of the mangled when flying from the spot to the loch where he corpse of the beautiful girl, whom all allowed was seized. The shoes which he had on when he had most passionately and tenderly loved; taken, fitted the foot-marks on the ground, not and he strove to prove-as he did prove to the far from the place of the murder, but not so conviction of many-that such behaviour was perfectly as another pair which were found in incompatible with such guilt, and almost of the house. But that other pair, it was proved, itself established his innocence. All that was belonged to the old man; and therefore the sworn to against him, as having passed in that correspondence between the footmarks and the dreadful room, was in truth for him-unless all prisoner's shoes, though not perfect, was a cir- our knowledge of the best and of the worst of cumstance of much suspicion. But a far human nature were not, as folly, to be given stronger fact, in this part of the evidence, was to the winds. He beseeched the jury, there sworn to against the prisoner. Though therefore, to look at all the other circumstances that was no blood on his shoes-when apprehended did indeed seem to bear hard upon the prihis legs were bare-though that circumstance, soner, in the light of his innocence, and not of strange as it may seem, had never been noticed his guilt, and that they wou'd all fade into till he was on the way to prison! His stock-nothing. What mattered his possession of the ings had been next day found lying on the watch and other trinkets? Lovers as they sward, near the shore of the loch, manifestly were, might not the unhappy girl have given after having been washed and laid out to dry them to him for temporary keepsakes? Or in the sun. At mention of this circumstance might he not have taken them from her in some a cold shudder ran through the court; but playful mood, or received them-(and the neither that, nor indeed any other circumstance brooch was cracked, and the mainspring of the in the evidence—not even the account of the watch broken, though the glass was whole)— appearance which the murdered body exhibit- to get them repaired in the town, which he ed when found on the moor, or when after- often visited, and she never? Could human wards laid on the bed-extorted from the pri- credulity for one moment believe, that such a soner one groan-one sigh-or touched the man as the prisoner at the bar had been sworn imperturbable deathliness of his countenance. to be by a host of witnesses-and especially It was proved, that when searched-in prison, by that witness, who, with such overwhelming and not before; for the agitation that reigned solemnity, had declared he loved him as his over all assembled in the room at Moorside own son, and would have been proud if Heathat dreadful day, had confounded even those ven had given him such a son-he who had bapaccustomed to deal with suspected criminals tized him, and known him well ever since a there were found in his pocket a small child-that such a man could rob the body of French gold watch, and also a gold brooch, her whom he had violated and murdered? If, which the ladies of the Castle had given to under the instigation of the devil, he had vioMargaret Burnside. On these being taken from lated and murdered her, and for a moment him, he had said nothing, but looked aghast. were made the hideous supposition, did vast A piece of torn and bloody paper, which had hell hold that demon whose voice would have