Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/460

450[April 10, 1869] but also five other nuns confined in like manner, all of whom, on recovering their liberty, took advantage of the commissary's presence to quit the establishment and return to their friends. The case is to come before the courts of law.

What strikes one in all these instances, and now, unfortunately, in like events in England, is that, in four different countries, widely diverse in all their circumstances—in Italy, France, Belgium, Great Britain—the respective stories run almost parallel to each other. Convents are the same, wherever established; convent life may change its climate, but never its animus. There is the same capitation, the same interruption and stifling of family affections, the same growing dislike between certain members of the community, the same persecution, at first petty, then diabolical; the same tension of the cord, the same final snapping thereof, either by escape or expulsion—which become scandalous—or by oubliettes and other means of "forgetting" and suppressing, which we may guess at, without deserving the reproach of wicked inventiveness.

When infatuated persons are weak enough to believe that they may merit heaven by making earth hell, we pity them heartily and sincerely; but we feel something stronger than pity for those, whose term of life on earth is made a hell by others, under the pretext of insuring their entrance to heaven. Self-inflicted torment we can regard with compassion; the tormentors of enthusiastic girls and broken-hearted women, we ought firmly to suppress, if possible. True, the oppressors would have no power but for the fault or the error of the victims, who place themselves in their hands. But high-flown young women, we hope, will now reflect whether the tyranny they are likely to meet with in the world, be not preferable to the mercies of a Reverend Mother Brownrigg; and whether, after all, it be wise to risk the leap out of a secular frying-pan into a religious fire.

now the crow, turning away from civilisation, strikes across the stormy Bodmin moors, where the ghost of the Cornish wizard Tregeagle bides his doom, expiates his crime, and is tormented by the relentless master whom he served so well. His favourite haunt is a small Dead Sea, called Dozmare Pool, a little tarn, eight hundred and ninety feet above the sea, not far from Brown Willie and the old tin workings on the Fowey. Wicked Tregeagle was a dishonest steward of Lord Robartes, at Landhydrock, where a room in the house is still called, Tregeagle's. This Sir Giles Overreach of the Carolan times cheated the tenants, destroyed papers, forged deeds, and sold land not his own. He amassed money enough to purchase the estate of Trevorder, in St. Breock. Certain it is, he murdered a sister, an angel who stood between him and his prey, and his miserable wife and children also fell victims to his pitiless cruelty. When death came to strike the monster, who trembled at his approach, Tregeagle heaped gold on the priests to sing, and pray, and save him from his certain doom. Their exorcisms succeeded, he died, and they laid him at rest in St. Breock church. But the devil was still watching—a law-suit arose at Bodmin about some lands, the title deeds of which Tregeagle had destroyed.

The case was argued over and over; trial after trial, and yet no result. At last even lawyers' expedients were exhausted. A final decision was to be given. Everything turned on the validity of a certain deed. The counsel for the defence was in despair. The judge was about to sum up. The court was hushed, when the minister of St. Breward entered, leading the corpse of Tregeagle. There was a shudder of horror when counsel, pale, but still brazen, commenced an exhaustive cross-examination of the unjust steward. The result proved a system of complicated fraud, of which the honest defendant had been the victim, and the trembling jury gave a unanimous and speedy verdict in his favour.

Now came the difficulty about laying the ghost of the dreadful witness. He kept following the defendant everywhere, and rendering his newly-gained property a burden to him. The lawyers and priests at last united their cunning, and devised a plan. They would set Tregeagle a purgatorial task, during which he might slowly repent, and during the performance of which he was safe from the Devil's claws. He should drain Dozmare, a tidal and bottomless pool. Drain it moreover, proposed a sly curate, with a limpet shell with a hole in it. He worked hard in that desolate place, and on stormy winter nights was heard howling at the hopelessness of his eternal task. The storms and lightnings tried to drive him from his labour, and then, if he rested for a moment, he was chased by the Devil and all his hounds to the Roche Rocks, where he obtained respite by ramming his head through the east window of St. Michael's chapel, where hermit lepers once dwelt.

For some reason not quite decided, Tregeagle got tired of Dozmare Pool, and was then sent to the north coast, near Padstow, to make trusses and ropes of sand. The moment he had packed and twisted them, the breakers came and rolled them level. Daughters of the Danaides! it was positively unbearable. The inhabitants of Padstow, maddened by his howlings, sent for St. Petrock to remove the monster to anywhere on the southern coast, out of hearing.

St. Petrock deposited his encumbrance on