Lightning flashed over Jeremiah’s head as he finished speaking, and effectually withered up his wit, as well as his courage. A long silence ensued, broken by the fiend at last, as he said—
“The condition shall be fulfilled. Your person shall be sacred to your wife, no more to come in contact with poker or fist, nails or teeth. She shall supply your grinders with every thing but her own fingers. As for sleep, you have not much time for that, before I come to claim you as my slave. And as for fuel, Nelly will seat you close by the grate, and you may take warm coals in your hand like boiled potatoes: and do not feel the least anxiety about fuel hereafter, you shall have great abundance then. Nay, nay, Gideon, your wife’s temper shall likewise be reformed. Oh! you are a man of discrimination, and have perceived that it is no easy task which you have assigned me.—Now name your other condition.”
Gideon then trembled, lest the first condition should be fulfilled, and thought over some impossibility which he should ask the devil to perform, as the fulfilment of the second condition.
“Then build me a wall, with stone and mortar, an hour before daybreak to morrow.”
“Provided there be a thaw.”
“No provisions,” boldly replied Gideon,—“no provisions. And lest there should be a thaw occasioned by crowds passing, it must not be built in a thoroughfare, but in a field at some distance from Ormskirk. It must be four hundred yards in length, and five feet in height, and all finished in an hour.”
“Why, Nick,” interrupted Jeremiah, whose courage flowed as well as ebbed, “you will take an hour to bring the sand from the sand-hills. Besides, no honest man will lend you his horse and cart.” No answer was returned, and the enemy walked around the circle once or twice, and then stood full in front of Gideon, while the parchment, with his name, burned brighter, and more bright. But the flame did not conceal the blood by which it had been written, and the form of a heart, weltering amidst the flame, turning in agony, and guarded by the name.
“The conditions,” Satan exclaimed, “shall be performed, and as soon as the wall is built, I shall escort you to your future home. Let this parchment float, till then, before you, in your waking moments and in your dreams. Accustom your mind to the thought of thunder, lightning, sounds of an earthquake, the hissing of fiends, the rolling of a deep unfathomable gulf, and the clutch of this little, little loving hand,” and he switched out a horrible paw, scorched, but not burned; for every joint and muscle moved with inconceivable ease and speed. “Do not think, poor wretch, that you shall see me then as merry as I have been at present, nor will you be merry when limb from limb is torn and mangled? Dream of it,—it must come to pass. A few hours, Gideon, and I meet you: till then, adieu,” and the fiend vanished. A long track of blue light, and dark forms hovering near it, marked the course of his flight over the wood.
As we have been long enough in the cold and bitter storm, and as all fire and brimstone have disappeared, we do not choose to walk side by side with the two tailors, on their way back, amidst the drifting of the snow, which, by this time, had fallen so heavily, that the way was completely blocked up.