“Claim him! claim him!” shrieked forth innumerable voices. The air seemed on fire, and dark masses were hastening through it, to the hellish scene. Deep gulfs were sounding and lashing their fury beneath the ground; and thunder seemed to bow the very poles of heaven, and make them totter. A long and wide circle of fiends was now made, dancing, and all pointing to Gideon with their black paws.
“Hell claims him. Which part shall we seize? Yours, noble leader, is the head. Give me the hand,—how fondly I shall shake it. Give me the breast,—how fondly I shall lie upon it. Give me the arm,—how confidently he shall lean upon mine. Let me kiss him,—how he shall love my sweet lips. Let me wash his feet,—how gently shall the fire dry them. Let me perfume his body. Ha—ha—ha!”
Their leader now raised two stones in his hands, and thundered forth, with an awful voice—
“Friends, these are the two last—and the wall is finished! Wretch, who art called Gideon Chiselwig—dost thou behold them? the two last! the two last!” and the whole infernal host raised a laugh of exultation, and poor Gideon fell to the ground. “Stay one little moment, Gideon,” the enemy exclaimed, “and you shall be supported in these loving arms. Stay—”
At that very moment a deep silence pervaded the place, and a loud crowing was raised by a cock, as it announced the devil’s day break, who must, therefore, depart, without being allowed to finish the wall. He stamped in fury, and all his infernal agents, disappointed of their prey, shrieked, and fled away. Jeremiah and young Mauncel comprehended the cause, and they shouted in joy, and taunted the fiend, until they beheld him approaching. In his hands he bore a large stone:—but his eyes glared not upon them, nor yet on the prostrate Gideon. They were fixed upon some object, which the branches of the tree seemed to conceal. Jeremiah, as he regained courage, addressed him,—
“So, Nicholas—dost thou see an apple which courts that hungry eye?”
There was no answer made, but a motion of the devil’s arm heaved up the stone, and instantly a cock fell down dead at Jeremiah’s feet, who, raising it, thus apostrophized it,—
“And thou hast saved my brother’s life, by losing thine own! But, unless thou has contracted thyself to the enemy, he shall not get thee, provided he does not invite himself along with us to dinner some day soon. No, Nick, begone. A fortnight ago, that church-yard clod, the sexton, told me that I was a brawny stripling, for I could mount my grandmother’s cat with a stepping stone. Oh! the fiend is gone! Well, poor bird, thou art a martyr, yet I shall commit thy sacred remains to my stomach, begging your young reverence’s pardon, in hopes of a safe and certain resurrection.”
They succeeded in raising Gideon from the ground, and when he was sufficiently recovered to listen to his escape, and the death of his preserver, the sadness of the latter news did not much take away from the joy of the former; and he was altogether cured of his mania for supernatural achievements.