Highland Legends

by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder

It happened one day, however, that as she was moving along a passage, she heard and recognised the particular stump of the lame gentleman whom she had formerly met. She could not be mistaken, and it was then entering on the lowest step of a flight, down which she was about to turn. She was then a pace or two ahead of Sarah, and contriving to lengthen her stride as she approached the turn at the stairs, she passed a keeper who was hurrying on to open the various locks of a cell which the stranger he was conducting was about to visit. Thus it was that, by fortunate accident, she was brought alone and unseen into contact with the gentleman for a few brief but precious moments. Nerved up by the importance of the act, she expanded her handkerchief before him, to show what it contained, put it into his hand, and with an imploring look that spoke volumes, she signed to him to conceal it, and as she passed him by she quickly whispered him,—

“Hide it now?—read it at home—and, oh! for mercy’s sake, act upon it.”

Taken thus by surprise, the stranger held it for a moment in his hand, and turned to look after her who gave it him. Sarah appeared whilst he was still standing thus. Chirsty stood on the lowest step, and looked up to him in breathless and motionless dread.

“What stand ye there for?” cried Sarah roughly to her, as she was descending.

The stranger seemed to recover his self-possession. He quietly returned the salutation which Sarah gave him, and wiping his face with the handkerchief, as if it had been his own pulled forth for that purpose, he thrust it deep into his bosom, and began again to climb the steps. Chirsty, overpowered by her feelings, leaned for a moment against the wall.

“What’s the matter with ye?” cried Sarah impatiently.

“Nothing, nothing, good Sarah!” said Chirsty, “only a sudden qualm of sickness, but it has gone off now;” and so saying, she pursued her way with tottering steps.

If Chirsty was subjected to anxious excitement before she had thus disposed of her broidered history, how much greater were her nervous agitations, her eternal tossings between hope and fear, from the moment she had thus committed it to the stranger? Had he betrayed her? nay, if he had, she must have heard of it from Sarah, or gathered it from the harsher treatment with which she must have been visited. He must have been so far her friend. But, admitting all this, whether he would have charity enough to act upon his knowledge of the facts it contained, or whether he would treat it as the mere pseudo-rational statement of a maniac, were matters of doubt that agonised her by night as well as by day. She slept not,—she ate not, and her brain grew lighter and lighter every day. She became sensible of this. A most unconquerable dread came upon her, that even admitting that the stranger was doing all he could to inform her friends of her unhappy situation, her senses would be undermined before they could come to her relief, and, as time wore on, and hope grew fainter and duller, she began to yield herself up to despair, which gradually threw its damp and suffocating clouds over her soul.

Whilst she was in this gloomy state, she happened one day to think of the needle, which she had now so much reason to fear had been but uselessly employed; and the horrible idea crossed her mind, that even such a small instrument as it might readily enough produce death, and that thus there was yet another and a more certain way in which it might be made to effect her deliverance from her present imprisonment. She immediately drew it forth from the skirt of her gown, where she had concealed it. She looked at it for some moments with a steady but agitated gaze; and then, earnestly imploring Heaven for aid in the fearful struggle she was undergoing, she started up, with a resolution acquired from above, and threw it from the window of her cell, that such wicked thoughts of self-destruction might never again be produced by it; and then, on her knees, she poured out her humble and submissive aspirations of thanks.

And now despondency gave way to resolution, and she at length determined to take the first opportunity of making a desperate attempt to effect her escape. But to produce even a hope of success, she saw that it would be necessary to use much preliminary artifice.