Page:New Peterson magazine 1859 Vol. XXXV.pdf/245

 GILLIAN.

BY MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.

[Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by Mrs. Ann S. Stephens, in the Clerk** Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York.]

CONTINUED PROM PAGE 155.

CHAPTER III.

“Your grandfather and I brought out the horses and drove like lightning to the spot. We turned down a cross-road And rode along the foot of the precipice, knowing well enough that it was of no use looking for them at the top, for, a long way off, we could see one wheel of the carriage where it was wedged in between two rocks, and that most awful of all Bounds, the groans of a horse, reached us, long before we came in sight of the poor critter, where it lay among the loose stones at the foot of the ledge, with a part of the broken carriage a lying across his back. He began to whinny as pitiful as a hurt baby when we came in sight, and, anxious as we were about the human souls, I hadn’t the heart to go by without cutting him loose from his mate, which had broken his neck, and was dead as a door nail.

“A little higher up the hill, where the earth sloped down from the foot of the rocks, we saw your father sitting on a piece of rock, and hold- ing his cousin’s head in his lap. We hollered out to know if all was right; but he didn’t answer: there wasn’t breath enough in his body to force out a word, but his look was awful. I never set my eyes on so white a face in all my life.

“We held on by the brushwood, and climbed up to where he sat with the dead man across his knees. I don’t know which was the palest, his or the cold face turned upward, as he searched for a breath of life.

“I had never seen your father before, but should have known him by the look of his cousin; for, one in his cold death, and the other so still and panic-struck, looked so much alike that I could hardly tell which was killed or which saved. At first 1 thought it really was our young Bentley that asked us, in a faint voice, to try if  we could do nothing toward bringing the form across his knee to life. But a glimpse of the dead face put me right: so I and the old man knelt down and tried our best to bring the poor fellow to, but it was of no use: his temple had struck against a sharp point of rock, and the skull was crushed in, only in one spot, but it  was enough to send him into eternity, and, Qod have mercy upon him, he was gone to his last account.

“We lifted the dead body from your father's arms and carried it down the hill. While father and I were weaving some hemlock boughs to¬ gether for a kind of bier to carry him on, your father came slowly down, looking pale as ever, and with one arm hanging loose and limp by his side. It was easy enough to see that it was broke, though he said nothing, only pressing his lips that grew white with pain, and giving out a sharp breath now and then. We helped him on to father’s horse, and, laying the dead body carefully on the rough bier, turned toward home.

“We hadn’t but just got to the cross-road when sister Sarah came up, without a sign of a bon¬ net on, and her hair all afloat. There wasn’t a bit of color in her face, and I hardly knew her at first„for her eyes seemed as large again as natural, and, though blue enough when she was cheerful, they shone out deep and black as & thunder cloud now.

“She gave one sharp look, first at the man on horseback; then at the poor fellow my father and I carried on our shoulders. Then she flung up her arms, and sent out a cry so sharp and full of pain, that we stood tock still frightened to the heart by it.

“She seemed to be afraid of coming near us, but went close up to the horse on which your father rode, and, laying her hand on the mane, asked something in a hoarse whisper.

“He answered her in a low voice, for he was too faint for loud words; but I knew that he was telling her the man we carried was dead.

“She let her hand fall from the neck of his horse, and stood still, as if his words had frozen her. I was loaded down with the dead, and could not go to comfort her: so, when we moved on, sho followed after, with great, heavy tears rolling down her face, and raising a sob now and then that it would have broken your heart to hear.

“As we went on, moving slowly up the road.