The lost hunter: A tale of early times

by John Turvill Adams

She moved quickly up to the table, and threw her arms around the coffin, resting her cheek on that of her husband, while the hot tears ran in large drops down its marble surface. One who thought he had a right to interfere, whispered in her ear, and took hold of an arm to draw her away, but she turned fiercely upon him.

"Who are you," she said, "to separate me from my husband? Go—I will keep him as long as I please."

The person, seeing her determination, desisted; and all looked on in mournful silence.

"O, Josiah," she sobbed, "who'd have thought it! The best, the kindest husband a woman ever had. O! how sorry I am for every hard word I ever spoke to you. And you so good—never to find fault when I scolded. I was wicked—and yet all the time I loved you so. Did you know it, Josiah? If you were back again, how different I would treat you! The fire should always be burning bright, and the hearth clean, when you came back cold from fishing, and you should never, never ask me a second time for anything. But you don't hear me. What's the use of crying and lamenting? Here," she said, raising herself up, and addressing those next her, "take him, and put him in his grave."

She staggered and fainted, and would have fallen, had she not been caught in the arms of sympathizing friends, who removed her into the adjoining chamber, and applied the usual restoratives. This caused some little delay, but, after a time, the person who had assumed upon himself the arrangements of the funeral, entered, preceding the four bearers, whose hats he took into his own hands, to restore them to the owners when the coffin should be placed in the hearse—a plain black wagon, with black cloth curtains—waiting at the door. The coffin was taken up by them, and deposited accordingly; after which, they took their places in front of the hearse, while the four pall-bearers ranged themselves on each side. At a signal from the director of the ceremony, the whole moved forward, leaving space for the carriages to approach the door. Mr. Armstrong's carriage was driven up, and the widow and children, with two or three females, were assisted in. Then followed a few other vehicles, with the nearest relatives, after whom came others, as they pleased to join. A large number of persons had previously formed themselves into a procession before the hearse, headed by the minister, who would have been accompanied by a physician, had one assisted in making poor Sill's passage to the other world easier.

The mournful cortége wound slowly up a hill to the burying-ground—a piece of broken land on the top. At the time of which we write, the resting-place of the departed of Hillsdale presented a different appearance from what it does now. Wild, neglected, overgrown with briers, it looked repulsive to the living, and unworthy of the dead. The tender sentiment which associates beauty with the memory of our friends, and loves to plant the evergreen and rose around their graves, seemed then not to have touched the bosoms of our people. A pleasing change has succeeded. The briars have been removed, trees planted, and when necessary to be laid out, new burial-ground spots have been selected remarkable for attractiveness and susceptibility of improvement. The brook has been led in and conducted in tortuous paths, as if to lull with a soft hymn the tired sleepers, and then expanded into a fairy lake, around which the weeping willow lets fall its graceful pendants. The white pine, the various species of firs, the rhododendron, mixed with the maple, the elm, and the tulip tree, have found their way into the sacred enclosure. The reproach of Puritanic insensibility is wiped out. Europe may boast of prouder monuments, but she has no burial-places so beautiful as some of ours. Père la Chaise is splendid in marble and iron, but the loveliness of nature is wanting. Sweet Auburn, and Greenwood, and Laurel Hill are peerless in their mournful charms.

The coffin was lowered into the grave in silence. No solemn voice pronounced the farewell "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." The ceremonies were concluded. The minister took off his hat, and addressing the bystanders, some of whom, respectfully imitating his example, raised the coverings from their heads, thanked them in the name of the afflicted family for this last tribute of regard. The procession was formed again, and slowly returned to the house, leaving the grave-digger to shovel in the gravel and complete his task.

As Mr. Armstrong and Faith walked home together, but few words were exchanged between them. Each was absorbed in reflection upon the scene just witnessed. In Faith's mind it was solemn, but devoid of gloom. With the hopefulness of health and youth, gleams of sunshine played over the grave. She looked beyond, and hoped and trusted.

But with her father it was different. Had it not been for him Sill might have been alive and well. He had made the wife a widow and her children orphans. He had introduced weeping and wailing into a happy home. But this was a slight calamity, and hardly worthy of a thought in comparison with another. The words of the minister, that the victim had been hurried to his sentence without time for preparation recurred with a feeling of horror. It was he through whose instrumentality Sill had been thrust into tormenting but undestroying flames. Better that he had never been born. Better that he had been strangled in the hour of his birth.

With thoughts like these, this unhappy man, whose heart was the seat of all the virtues, tormented himself. It seemed sometimes strange that people did not point their fingers at him: that he was not arrested for the murder: that he was permitted to walk abroad in the sunshine. His mind, unknown to those about him, unknown to himself, was hovering on the confines of insanity. Only a spark, perhaps, was necessary to light a conflagration. Alas! that one so good, so noble, should be a victim of destiny. But we forbear to intrude further into reflections alike miserable and insane.