'Call not on Him, hypocrite, for even He may fail one so steeped in wickedness as you. Hear me—I am Callum Dhu Mac Ian, on whom you have never ceased to heap up insult, contumely, and contempt. I am well and young, and strong, having, with God's blessing, many years of life before me, while you are now in the jaws of death. You will go down into the depth of that dark linn like a stone, Mr. Snaggs; a splash, a bubble, and all will be over! One sinner more will have gone to his awful account—'
'Mercy!' he croaked.
The tree was still burning and bending!
'A time will come, a week, a month, a season perhaps, and the deep waters of Loch Ora will give up the ghastly dead. A corpse, swollen, hideous and frightful beyond all humanity, will be cast upon the pebbled beach, and it may lie there long undiscovered, amid gnats that swarm in the sunshine of noon, and birds that scream in the night—ay, very long, for our glens are desolate now, and for months a human foot may never press the heather there. That corpse will be yours, Mr. Snaggs! When found, it will excite awe and wonder, for the foolish mother that bore you would not know her sinful son; but anon horror and disgust will force the finders to cover it hastily up with earth and stones; and there you will rot, Mr. Snaggs, while your ill-gotten gear will be spent and enjoyed by others.'
'Oh, have mercy upon me!' howled Snaggs, who now ceased to make the smallest exertion, as every movement served more and more to dislodge the consuming root. 'Mercy—I tell you—mercy; my dear, good man, have mercy!'
'Dioul! how long that tree holds on!' cried Callum, stamping his foot; 'but now it bends! now it breaks! Hoigh—one moment more and all will be over, Mr. Snaggs!'
The white lips of the victim quivered; he was uttering a voiceless prayer—or perhaps it was the more contortion and convulsing of his features. The fitful light of the moon, and occasionally the gleams of the blazing heather and distant thickets, played on the rocks and wild plants of the chasm, imparting a satanic effect to the episode.
Suddenly the tree snapped with a crash that made my heart leap, and with a cry, amid a shower of sparks that flew upward, Snaggs vanished with the half-burned stem into the black gulf below, where the fierce and foaming mountain-torrent swept them away like autumn leaves, towards the deeper waters of the Loch, and the more distant waves of the Atlantic.
I never heard that his corpse was found.
'It is God's judgment,' said Callum, who had gazed frigidly at this terrible sight, the realities of which I could not reconcile for a time, or believe to be palpable and true.