"It is his wish," said the former, briefly. "The wish of a dying man. Will you convey it to him?"
"Oh, if it be his wish, he shall surely have it," said the jailor; "but it is the oddest wish I ever heard."
"You will convey it to him, then?" replied the stranger, with the same sententious brevity as before.
"I will," was the rejoinder.
The woman curtsied and withdrew in the same cold, stern, and formal manner she had maintained throughout the interview. On her departure, the jailor proceeded to Macpherson's dungeon with the extraordinary commission with which he had been charged. The latter, on seeing the well-known instrument, snatched it eagerly and delightedly from its bearer, exclaiming—"Welcome, welcome! thou dear companion of better days! thou solacer of many a heavy care! thou delight of many a happy hour! Faithful Eneas!" And with the wild, strange, and romantic recklessness of his nature, he immediately began to play in the sweetest tones imaginable—tones which seemed to have acquired additional pathos from the circumstances of the performer—some of the melancholy airs of his native land; and from that hour till the hour of the minstrel's doom, these strains were almost constantly heard pouring through the small grated window of his dungeon. But they were soon to cease for ever. Macpherson was, in a few days afterwards, brought to trial, and condemned to be hanged at the cross of Banff.
On the day on which he suffered the last penalty of the law, he requested the jailor to send some one with his violin to him to the place of execution. The request was complied with. The instrument was put into his hands as he stood at the foot of the gallows, when he played over the melancholy air known by the name of "Macpherson's Lament." It had been composed by himself while in prison. On concluding the pathetic strain, he grasped his violin by the neck, dashed it to pieces against the gallows, and flung the fragments into the grave prepared for himself at the foot of the gibbet. In a few minutes after, that grave was occupied by all that remained of Macpherson the Freebooter.
We have now, we conceive, to gratify the reader's curiosity on one point only—and this is accomplished by adverting to Ellen Martin. The unhappy girl ultimately ascertained, though not till long after his execution, who her mysterious lover was; but neither the history of her attachment to him, nor her intimacy with him, was ever known to any one besides his friend Eneas; for to none other had he ever named her. Nor, during his confinement, or at any period after his capture, had he ever made the slightest allusion to her. This, indeed, from motives of delicacy towards her, he had studiously and carefully avoided.
On Ellen, the effect of a grief—for the discovery of her lover's real character had not been able to efface the impressions which his handsome person and gentle manners had made upon her young heart—the effect, we say, of a grief which she durst not avow, was that of inspiring a settled melancholy, and determining her on a life of celibacy. In the grave of Macpherson was buried the object of her first love, and she never knew another.