"It is, indeed," replied the soldier,—"of a man in great peril, or suffering. Remain here on the road; and if anything—Nay, if you will follow me, it may be better; but let it be at a distance. If anything happens to me, set spurs to your horses:—Telie here can at least lead you back to the fort."
With these words, and without waiting to hear the remonstrances, or remove the terrors of his companions, the young man turned his horse into the wood, and guided by the cries, which were almost incessant, soon found himself in the vicinity of the place from which they proceeded. It was a thick grove of beeches of the colossal growth of the west, their stems as tall and straight as the pines of the Alleghanies, and their boughs, arched and pendulous like those of the elm, almost sweeping the earth below, over which they cast shadows so dark that scarce anything was visible beneath them, save their hoary and spectral trunks.
As Roland, followed by his little party, approached this spot, the cries of the unknown, and as yet unseen, sufferer, fearful even at a distance, grew into the wildest shrieks of fear, mingled with groans, howls, broken prayers and execrations, and half-inarticulate expressions, now of fondling entreaty, now of fierce and frantic command, that seemed addressed to a second person hard by.
A thousand strange and appalling conceits had crept into Roland's mind, when he first heard the cries. One while he almost fancied he had stumbled upon a gang of savages, who were torturing a prisoner to death; another moment, he thought the yells must proceed from some unlucky hunter, perishing by inches in the grasp of a wild beast, perhaps a bear or panther, with which animals it was easy to believe the forest might abound. With such horrible fancies oppressing his mind, his surprise may be imagined, when, having cocked his rifle and thrown open his holsters, to be prepared for the worst, he rushed into the grove and beheld a spectacle no more formidable than was presented by a single individual,—a man in a shaggy blanket-coat,—sitting on horseback under one of the most venerable of the beeches, and uttering those diabolical outcries that had alarmed the party, for no imaginable purpose, as Roland was at first inclined to suspect, unless for his own private diversion.
A second look, however, convinced the soldier that the wretched being had sufficient cause for his clamour, being, in truth, in a situation almost as dreadful as any Roland had imagined. His arms were pinioned behind his back, and his neck secured in a halter (taken, as it appeared, from his steed), by which he was fastened to a large bough immediately above his head, with nothing betwixt him and death, save the horse on which he sat,—a young and terrified beast, at whose slightest start or motion, he must have swung off and perished, while he possessed no means of restraining the animal whatever, except such as lay in strength of leg and virtue of voice.
In this terrible situation, it was plain, he had remained for a considerable period, his clothes and hair (for his hat had fallen to the ground) being saturated with rain; while his face purple with blood, his eyes swollen and protruding from their orbits with a most ghastly look of agony and fear, showed how often the uneasiness of his horse, round whose body his legs were wrapped with the convulsive energy of despair, had brought him to the very verge of strangulation.
The yells of mortal terror, for such they had been, with which he had so long filled the forest, were changed to shrieks of rapture, as soon as he beheld help approach in the person of the astonished soldier. "Praised be the Etarnal!" he roared; "cut me loose, strannger!—Praised be the Etarnal, and this here dumb beast!—Cut me loose, strannger, for the love of God!"
Such was Roland's intention; for which purpose he had already clapped his hand to his sabre, to employ it in a service more humane than any it had previously known; when, unfortunately, the voice of the fellow did what his distorted countenance had failed to do, and revealed to Roland's indignant eyes the author of all his present difficulties, the thief of the pinfold, the robber of Brown Briareus,—in a word, the redoubtable Captain Ralph Stackpole.
In a moment, Roland understood the mystery which he had been before too excited to inquire into. He remembered the hints of Bruce, and he had learned enough of border customs and principles to perceive that the justice of the woods had at last overtaken the horse-thief. The pursuing party had captured him,—taken him in the very manner, while still in possession of the 'two-year-old pony,' and at once adjudged him to the penalty prescribed by the border code,—tied his arms, noosed him with the halter of the stolen horse, and left him to swing, as soon as the animal should be tired of supporting him. There was a kind of dreadful poetical justice in thus making the stolen horse the thief's executioner; it gave the animal himself an opportunity to wreak vengeance for all wrongs received, and at the same time allowed his captor the rare privilege of galloping on his back into eternity.
Such was the mode of settling such offences against the peace and dignity of the settlements; such was the way in which Stackpole had been reduced to his unenviable situation; and, that all passers-by might take note that the execution had not been done without authority, there was painted upon the smooth white bark of the tree, in large black letters, traced by a finger well charged with moistened gunpowder, the ominous name—JUDGE LYNCH,—the Rhadamanthus of the forest, whose decisions are yet respected in the land, and whose authority sometimes bids fair to supersede that of all erring human tribunals.