Page:The London Magazine, volume 8 (July–December 1823).djvu/144

 over the railing. But, instead of finding his grave in the waters, he felt himself below seized powerfully by the grasp ofa man—whom, from his scornful laugh, he recognized as his evil counsellor. The man bore him to the shore, and said—“No, no my good friend: he that once enters into a league with me—him I shall deliver from death even in his own despite.”

Half crazy with despair, the next morning Schroll crept out of the town with a loaded pistol. Spring was abroad—spring flowers, spring breezes, and nightingales : they were all abroad, but not for him, or his delight. A crowd of itinerant tradesmen passed him, who were on their road to a neighbouring fair. One of them, observing his dejected countenance with pity, attached himself to his side, and asked him in a tone of sympathy what was the matter. Two others of the passers-by Schroll heard distinctly saying—“Faith, I should not like for my part to walk alone with such an ill-looking fellow.” He darted a furious glance at the men, separated from his pitying companion with a fervent pressure of his hand, and struck off into a solitary track of the forest. In the first retired spot, he fired the pistol: and behold! the man who had spoken to him with so much kindness lies stretched in his blood, and he himself is without a wound. At this moment, while staring half-unconsciously at the face of the murdered man, he feels himself seized from behind. Already he seems to himself in the hands of the public executioner. Turning round, however, he hardly knows whether to feel pleasure or pain on seeing his evil suggester in the dress of a grave-digger. “My friend,” said the grave-digger, “if you cannot be content to wait for death until I send it, I must be forced to end with dragging you to that from which I began by saving you—a public execution. But think not thus, or by any other way, to escape me. After death thou wilt assuredly be mine again.”

“Who, then,” said the unhappy man, “who is the murderer of the poor traveller?”

“Who? why, who but yourself? was it not yourself that fired the pistol?”

“Aye, but at my own head.”

The fiend laughed in a way that made Schroll’s flesh creep on his bones. “Understand this, friend, that he whose fate I hold in my hands cannot anticipate it by his own act. For the present, begone, if you would escape the scaffold. To oblige you once more, I shall throw a veil over this murder.”

Thereupon the grave-digger set about making a grave for the corpse, whilst Schroll wandered away—more for the sake of escaping the hideous presence in which he stood, than with any view to his own security from punishment.

Seeing by accident a prisoner under arrest at the guard-house, Schroll’s thoughts reverted to his own confinement. “How happy,” said he, “for me and for Charlotte—had I then refused to purchase life on such terms, and had better laid to heart the counsel of my good spiritual adviser!”—Upon this a sudden thought struck him—that he would go and find out the old clergyman, and would unfold to him his wretched history and situation. He told his wife that some private affairs required his attendance for a few days at the town of. But, say what he would, he could not prevail on her to desist from accompanying him.

On the journey his chief anxiety was—lest the clergyman, who was already advanced in years, at the memorable scene of the sand-hill, might now be dead. But at the very entrance of the town he saw him walking in the street, and immediately felt himself more composed in mind than he had done for years. The venerable appearance of the old man confirmed him still more in his resolution of making a full disclosure to him of his whole past life: one only transaction, the murder of his first wife, he thought himself justified in concealing; since, with all his peni-