Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/304

296 prone to superstition, the impression of an incident so sudden and appalling was the more powerful in its effect.

We sat in silence.

“Balfour,” I said at last, “we must put off our expedition for this night; it is blowing and raining hard, and you are not in a fit state to encounter fatigue and exposure.”

“Why do you talk thus?” he replied, looking up doubtfully; “do you think that I am afraid?”

“Not at all, my friend; but this circumstance that has so startled you may perhaps make you—” Here I hesitated, not caring to say what I thought, so I stopped abruptly. “Wilder,” said Balfour angrily, seizing me by the arm, “have I ever quailed in this most horrible, but, to us, righteous task?—have I ever shrunk from my duty, that you thus insinuate?”

“Never, Balfour; you have always stood by me like a man, and I would rather have you for my lieutenant than any other of the students, and that you know right well; but we will not go to-night for all that.”

He started up, and with sudden energy, exclaimed, “I will go, even if I go alone, even should the dead arise to oppose me—Wilder, say not one word more;” and he struck his fist violently on the table, setting the skeletons and window-frames trembling and clattering in the pause of the storm, which was now subsiding.

At this moment we heard the sound of wheels, and the old clock tolled twelve.

“Here is the gig and we not ready,” I exclaimed.

I was glad to see Balfour eagerly seize and put on his grave clothes. I followed his example. We then collected all the requisite tools, tooth-pick, shovel, elevator, &c., and descended to the street groping along in the dark.

“A wild night, lads,” said the cheerful voice of young Fletcher, a youth of seventeen, who, accustomed to drive, was chosen as our charioteer. “I have had the greatest work to get the trap; I should never have come round old Higgins if it had not been for Nancy. He declared that we were going to commit a dead robbery, and that somebody would swing for it one of these days, and Nancy actually kissed me because she had it in her mind that I should be surely nipped up by them awful spectres. At last, however, I got off, and here I am all right and tight.”

“Jack,” said I, “can you see, and is the horse steady? It is awkward work driving in such a black night as this.”

“Be easy, my dear friend, I could drive you to the devil if required.”

“Well,” added Balfour, “I believe it is not unlikely that you may do so.”

It was a good horse, and we rattled along at a great pace between long lines of lamps through lonely streets, deserted, save by drowsy watchmen calling the hour, who raised their dim lanthorns to see what we were. Then came the straggling, half-lighted suburbs, and lastly the dark and open country through which we drove more slowly, though still at a steady trot, to the quiet churchyard at Hilton. The wind had much subsided; low, rolling clouds, opening here and there, showed a few faint stars; but the road where shadowed by trees would have been almost undistinguishable save for the glimmering pools left by the heavy rain. Part of our route lay between thick plantations of firs, whose giant arms waved to and fro, and croaked mournfully. Arrived within a quarter of a mile of our destination we drew up, arranged our tools in the most convenient way for carrying them, and then walked the horse gently till we came near the burying-ground. We now quitted the gig, which Fletcher drove back to the shadow of the fir trees, there to await our return. As I ascended with Balfour the path that led to the churchyard, we paused to look round, and assure ourselves that no one was following upon our steps. The low grounds we had just passed through, though for the most part shrouded in the darkness, were in places indicated by the uncertain course of the river that caught faint gleams of light from the parting clouds above. The distant city, like a shadowy monster with a thousand gleaming eyes, lay stretched upon the plain; while the river, flowing onward to the walls, held to its breast the inverted firmament of lamps quivering like fire-flies upon the surface of the rippling flood. The spires and other lofty buildings stood out here and there from the wide gloom in high relief, red with the reflected gleam of furnace fires. These restless flames, like those of Phlegethon extinguished never, gave off from their tall chimneys long lines of smoke, which carried the dusky radiance to the clouds themselves. There was something mysterious in these silent gleaming fires, apparently untended, yet holding an independent existence, when the rough master-minds and toiling hands that ruled them through the day had sunk weary to their rest.

The city gleam’d with light, but gave no sound;

She, with her hundred thousand sleepers, kept

Unbroken silence: in the gloom profound

A life in death, the illumined shadow slept.

We turned from this solemn spectacle to the solemn thing we were about to do. I never approached the dark sanctuary of death with more of awe and reverence than at this moment, though about to mock and desecrate that sanctuary by rifling it of its poor contents. The quiet church, the moaning wind, the feeble and struggling stars, all seemed to upbraid us for thus roughly breaking upon the deep slumber of the dead. The tender association we hold with the last resting-place, the flower-planted grave of the beloved, fell heavily upon a heart meditating the immediate commission of what seemed, in spite of philosophy, to be a crime, and which is certainly a deed most painful and revolting in the execution.

The shadow of the darkest night, which you inwardly hope may shroud the ghoul-like proceeding, is never profound enough. The disinterred body gleams with its own ghastly lustre. A faint phosphorescent nimbus seems to surround it, developing the characteristic outline of humanity, when it is so dark that you cannot see your hand before you. I do not know how it was, but at this moment I did not feel my usual