Lena, with her cloak folded closely around her fairy form, and hooded over her head, proceeds along the path leading to the Brandon plantation. Poor, simple child, herself innocent as the forest fawn, she knows not that she is carrying in her hand the death-warrant of one,—who, although but little known, should yet be dear to her—Dick Tarleton, the father of Pierre Robideau.
She succeeds in delivering the letter, though failing to preserve her incognito. The hooded head proved but a poor disguise. The domestic who takes the epistle out of her hand recognises, by the white out-stretched arm and slender symmetrical fingers, the daughter of “old Rook, de hunter dat live ’pon Caney Crik.” So reports he to his master, when questioned about the messenger who brought the anonymous epistle.
Known or unknown, the name is of slight significance; the withholding of it does not affect the action intended by the writer, nor frustrate the cruel scheme. As the morning sun strikes into the “bit o’ clearing” described in Jerry Rook’s letter, it throws light upon a terrible tableau—the body of a man suspended from the branch of a tree. It is upon the same branch where late hung the young hunter Robideau. It is the body of his father.
There is no one near—no sign of life, save the buzzards still lingering around the bones of the bear, and the quaint, grey wolf that has shared with them their repast. But there are footmarks of many men—long scores across the turf, that tell of violent struggling, and a patch of grass more smoothly trampled down beneath the gallows tree. There stood Judge Lynch, surrounded by his jury and staff of executioners, while above him swung the victim of their vengeance.
Once more had the travestie of a trial been enacted; once more condemnation pronounced; and that tragedy, long postponed, was now played to the closing scene, the dénouement of death!
Story 1--Chapter XIII.
Six Years After.
Six years have elapsed since the lynching of Dick Tarleton. Six years, by the statute of limitations, will wipe cut a pecuniary debt, and make dim many a reminiscence. But there are remembrances not so easily effaced; and one of these was the tragedy enacted in the clearing, near the Caney Creek.