“Mamma, kiss the blood away from my lips. Wipe this love ringlet, or papa wont play with it. Oh! cool my lips. Take the fire out of them. Mamma, mamma! must I die? Who took me out of your bosom, to lie here?”
Every word fell, like a child’s curse, upon the ear of Emily.
“Oh Roger! good Roger,” implored the lady,—“what can be done?”
The boy attempted to rise, but his strength seemed gone, and his head dashed itself violently upon the floor. His mother fell down senseless. Roger rushed from the room, to bring water to sprinkle upon her face. In a moment he returned,—and there a scene was presented to his eyes, which nothing in after-life could curtain from his mind. Both lay lifeless. The countenance of the mother was mangled and bloody, and her boy’s teeth were in her cheek. As soon as she had fallen, the boy had crept to her, under the same infernal influence as before, and, fortunately, she never awoke from insensibility.
Meanwhile let us leave the dead, and follow the living. The reader is not asked to dry his tears after the mournful spectacle, and put off his sackcloth, and don singing robes and smiles, for soon the curtain may be raised from the same scene, to exhibit on the same stage, another victim.
William Morden, when out of the sight of his wife, came in view of the object of his pursuit. Unlike the aged, the hag avoided not the many elevations of sharp rock, on her path. After passing them, for a moment she would linger, and looking back, and howling, motion him, with a wild plunge of her arm, to follow. The scenery became more bleak and desolate, as if nothing in animal or vegetable life could flourish near her abode. Not a sound was heard; her steps were hurried, but silent. They were approaching the cave, which was formed in the old channel of the brook, and which was supposed to be the outlet of a subterraneous passage leading from the abbey into a deep wood, which skirted and concealed the bank. Amidst the trees strange lights seemed to move, and the witch, by their flash, was enabled to expose her malignant and hellish countenance to the gaze of Morden. She stood still and he advanced. From the folds of the cloak in which she was wrapped, she drew her hand, and pointed to a deep ravine, at a short distance from the cave. She muttered some incantations, raised her eyes, as if to invisible agents in the air, and exclaimed, “Slaves! ye know my power! Shew him—shew him what a word, escaping from my lips, has done. Now, fool!” and she grasped his hands for a moment, “gaze there—and tremble.”
Morden started, as lurid lights gleamed in a mass, over him. He stumbled down the declivity, and fell, his head striking against his lifeless steed! Unearthly shrieks of laughter saluted him, and as he sprung to his feet, the witch, surrounded by flames, was waving her arms in fiendish joy. He once more found himself on the path close beside her. All again was darkness, and now he heard the witch enter the cave. He prepared to follow her. The entrance was small, and could only admit him by crawling through. His face came in contact with the jutting rocks, and he imagined that around his neck the hag had placed her hands, to strangle him. He crept in, but saw nothing. No object could be distinguished, until, on a floor far below him, he beheld a few embers burning on the hearth, and a form walking around, and by its shadow intercepting the light. The ground was damp beneath his hands, and the very worms were crawling over them, and thus early claiming connexion, by twining around them the marriage ring of the grave. He knew not how to let himself down into the interior. The light from the embers, meanwhile, was gradually increasing; and at length he recognized the witch rubbing her hands over them. Her head was uncovered, and her long grey locks were flung back from a brow black and wrinkled. He could not remove his eyes from her, and every moment he expected that she would arise, and curse him with her arts. She lighted a taper, and placed it upon a small coffin, and sung a death dirge; at every interval, when she paused for breath, making the most unnatural mirth. The lid of the coffin slowly arose, as she removed the taper, and a beautiful boy raised his face, so pale and deadly, over which golden locks curled, like young spirits. His sweet blue eyes met those of Morden; his little hands were pressed together, and his lisping voice said, mournfully,—“Father!”
Morden sprang down, when, with a wild shriek, the witch turned upon him, and attempted to mimic the tones in which the fond word “father” had been breathed. He prepared to rush upon her, when every limb was powerless. He could not move, and yet all his senses were intensely active and awake. He beheld the coffin again closed, and glad now would he have been, could he have returned to his home, to assure himself of his child’s safety. The witch began some awful and unholy rites, as she lowered the coffin into a hole dug beside the embers, and then over the spot, after her incantations had been muttered, sprung up a mossy tomb-stone, with this inscription,—
