The snow crisped beneath their feet, a slight breeze passed over their heads, and these were the only sounds heard. The hour of twelve was striking in the town, as they reached the spot assigned.
Gideon now seemed to awake from his insensibility. He attempted to speak, but words and utterance altogether failed him. The magic circle was drawn around, and he looked up to summon the enemy of mankind to fulfil his engagements, when a violent fit of shuddering seized his limbs, and some thing not less gentle passed over his soul. The stars above were fiery, and gleaming with malignant aspect and influence over a mortal’s fate, and around them was a dull haze, which was interpreted into a shroud. Not that the tailor was an astrologer, in faith or practice: but there are moments and circumstances when the orbs of heaven appear as the types of earth’s history,—as the eyes of fate turned upon individuals, likewise, with their revelations. He then gazed around. Not a tree or fence stood near, for a covert; but a desert heath, still more desolate in its appearance from its snowy covering. The ground, with its winter’s carpet, was prevented from echoing to footsteps: and the air seemed, too, as if it were bound up from the vibrations of sound,—for over all was a dead silence.
William Mauncel was the first who spoke. “Gideon, thou tremblest; I will take thy duty. Give me the charm by which thou renderest the devil obedient to thy call. Eh? does he stand upon ceremony? My good uncle assures us that he frequently pays us a visit when he is not invited, and that he makes himself such a pleasant fellow, that we are loth to give him a hint that it is not agreeable for the time to have his company, much less to shew him to the door. Ah! ah! Gideon, you were too polite, you gave him your card, with name and residence, last night. That will make him troublesome. He is a punctual keeper of his appointments. Now, pray, give me the signal. Nay, then,” as Gideon’s voice could not be heard, “Jeremiah will oblige me.”
The substance of the directions was repeated from the old book, where they had, at first, stimulated the tailor’s courage, to make him more than a mortal hero. William laughed at the affectionate terms in which he was to invite the enemy; and began, in as low and gentle a tone, to say, “Come, James, come,” as he had ever employed when he had tapped at the window of his uncle’s study, where his beautiful cousin was, whispering, “come, Mary, come,” in order that she should trip out and enjoy a moonlight scene, seated along with him in the arbour. Still the devil was not pleased most graciously to appear, and William laughed and shouted in full merriment. He, indeed, believed in the devil’s journeyings to and fro, over the earth, and in his exertions and plans to obtain victims by false and almost involuntary contracts; but then he was not frightened, for as he firmly believed that human skill, stratagem, and valour might baffle him. Where was the necessity, he reasoned, of mistaking his black majesty for a gentleman in black; of using blood instead of ink; of receiving slate stones instead of golden coins? He also held as a part of his superstitious creed, the existence of certain old ladies, on whose chins the Lancashire rains have fallen with such a fructifying influence, as to beard them “like the pard;” with hands dark and sickly, from the deadly drugs which they mix over the light of the cauldron, in their cave, and with decrepid and corrupted forms, as if they were spirits of another world, and had come to the charnel house, and there clothed themselves in a body which had begun to be the prey of worms; and with souls, whose every idea was familiar with the dark fates in store for earth, and rejoiced in those which were to blast the happy, and destroy the beautiful. But then, he as firmly held that their spells might be made to fall impotent upon man. He laughed at them, and was prepared to scratch them, in their only vulnerable part,—above the breath. In travelling, he cared not though he should have the company of a ghost, provided it only spoke, and recounted some horrible deed, as the avenger of which it walked the earth,—for he hated silence. At home, he would have shook the devil very frankly and cordially by the hand, had he ever paid him a visit, and he would have smoked a pipe, or drunk a cup of tea (had tea then been known) with any witch, in her own abode. Thus William Mauncel was exceedingly merry in prospect of beholding the devil, whom he imagined that he could so easily thwart. In a loud voice, he again exclaimed, “come, James, come,” and instantly a little man, with the tools of a mason-builder, stood opposite to Gideon.
“Gideon Chiselwig, give me the dimensions of the wall which I have contracted to build. You know that it is now an hour from my day break, and I must finish it, and then claim you. You know me?—or shall I disclose my features? and assume some of my former tones, and thus convince you that I am—the devil?”
Gideon trembled still more, and feebly ejaculated, “No, no. I believe in very deed that thou art my enemy, and, I beseech thee, give me no further proof.”
“Until,” was the return, “your very existence and employment, as well as habitation, shall prove it.”
“And that shall never be,” interrupted the vicar’s nephew. “Shew thyself to us, belch fire and smoke, if you do not wish to pass for an unskilful conjuror.”
“That would do him good,” remarked Jeremiah, “a good and powerful vomit would be of essential service. Whenever I have compelled my food to march too quickly down into my stomach, I am not well until it has made a hasty retreat back again to head quarters. It is exactly the same when too much goes at once. Now, I suppose that you have rather more of fire and smoke than you could wish. In fact, your throat is said to be worse than a chimney. Would it not, therefore, be prudent to vomit a little?”