Not far from the spot where Callum had rescued Sir Horace Everingham, and at a place where the steep rocky brow of the cliffs overhung the dark chasm through which the foaming waters of the black river bellowed, roared, and forced a passage towards the sea, we saw the miserable factor Snaggs dangling in mid-air like a crow, and clinging to the branches of a tough but withered mountain-ash, and to its stem, which—terrible to conceive!—projected over this dark Cimmerian gulf. Hemmed in on every side by the encroaching fire, which ran at his heels, he had been forced to retreat upward to the edge of the rock, and though all unused to feats of strength or agility, excess of terror had supplied him with both; for when the flames assailed the thick coating of turf, soft heather, and crackling whins which covered the summit of the Craig, he was compelled to take refuge in the branches of the mountain-ash, and to these he clung, swinging above the dark vacuity below, with a tenacity of clutch and a horror impossible to portray.
But now the same fire which had consumed the tufted whins, the turf and heath, assailed the dry roots of the ash which twined among them, and soon the whole fabric of the tree was in a blaze; and as its fibres crackled and relaxed their tough grasp of the rocks and smouldering turf, the stem began to sink and yield with its own weight, and the weight of the fainting sinner who clung to it.
Such was the terrible tableau that awaited us on reaching a ledge of rock close by it.
As seen by the fitful glimpses of the moon through gauzy clouds and rolling smoke, the pale, white, ghastly visage of Snaggs was appalling. He still shrieked for succour and for mercy, and his entreaties were but a succession of shrill screams like those of a girl. His eyes glared; foam hung upon his lips, and his tongue was parched and swollen. I would have hastened to proffer him assistance, but the strong hands of Callum held me back by main force.
'Mercy to the merciless?' said he; 'nay—he shall have such mercy as he gave the people of our glens—such mercy as he would have given my poor Minnie at the Clach-na-greiné. He is a fiend—so let him die a fiend's death! Ha—ha! Mr. Snaggs—the tree is bending now; once it rose at the angle of forty-five, now it is quite horizontal. I wish every factor hung on its branches like fruit for the devil. Think of the old widow of the Ca-Dearg, and her silver hair all clotted in her blood; think of the cold, grey morning that dawned on the wet mountain-side, when the dying wife of the Red Gillespie lay with her new-born babe, and expired without a shelter from the blast! Her babe is now where you can never be—for it is among the flowers that are gathered in heaven! Think of the cruel advice you have given this jolter-headed stranger—this Horace Everingham—whose presence has been a curse to us. Think of my Minnie and the evil you intended for her. Think of all your hypocrisy, your legal quirks and quibbles, and of all the villanies of your past life, for the root of the tree burns bravely, and will not last a minute more. Ha! ha! ha!'
The love of life, the lust of gold, and the dread of death and hell grew strong within the wretched soul of Snaggs, and his aspect became frightful. Matted by perspiration, his hair clung about his temples, and his eyes were starting from their sockets. With all the tenacity that love of existence, conflicting with an awful fate, can impart to the sinews of a coward, he clung to that withered ash, and swung wildly over the hideous abyss, where the black water foamed two hundred feet below.
Now his toes touched the brow of the rock, and anon his feet would beat the empty air in vain! The flames played about the roots; the smoke almost choked him, and slowly, gradually, fearfully the stem continued to sink and to yield, as the knotty fibres which so long had grasped the rocks were relinquishing their hold at last.
'Mercy—mercy—mercy!' he shrieked.
'Such mercy as you gave the people in Glen Ora and Glentuirc—such mercy as you have ever given the poor and the trusting, I give you now—a tiger's mercy!' replied Callum, still holding me back, though it was physically impossible for me to have afforded the least assistance to Snaggs, circumstanced as he was then, and cut off from us by the flaming tree.
'God—God!' gasped the miserable wretch.