Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 05

by Unknown

This frenzied burst, wrung from a mind labouring under some terrible burden, startled and alarmed me; and it was some moments before I could perceive the meaning which was veiled under his strange words and manner. He had been seized with an attack of his complaint, and, unable to bear it, had run out of the house to seek some relief at my hands. I requested him to be seated; and, though I had to struggle with the disadvantage of candle light, and the want of one of my assistants, I resolved upon performing the operation before the agony had abated.

I accordingly rung for my oldest apprentice, and made preparations for the work, which, though simple, requires skill and care. The patient was seated on a chair, formed for receiving the back of the head on a soft cushion, and used by me for operations on the upper extremities. Everything was ready; my apprentice came in, and, as he passed quickly forward, struck his head against the skeleton of Walter T——, that hung at the side, and a little to the back of the operating chair on which the patient was seated. That perterricrepus of dry bones crackled as the body swung from side to side, and attracted the attention of the man, whose eye, tortured as he was, sought fearfully the cause of the strange noise.

I saw that his attention was in an instant rivetted on the figure, and perceived that his look was directed to the words (written in large letters) on the knee pan. The knife was in my hand, and my apprentice was about to lay hold of his head. The attitude of the man arrested my eye, and I witnessed, what I have often heard of, but never saw before, that extraordinary erection of the hair of the head, produced by extreme fear, and known by the name of horripilation.

I now thought he was afraid of the knife—but I was soon undeceived. With a loud yell he started up suddenly and violently—his hair seemed to move with horror—his body was in the attitude of flying from the figure, yet his limbs obeyed not his fear; he stood rivetted to the spot, with his eyes chained on the skeleton, his lips wide open, and his hands extended. In this position he remained for several seconds, while my apprentice and I gazed on in wonder on the horror-stricken victim.

"I said I would brave Heaven," he exclaimed in wild accents, "by curing a heaven-sent disease; but is Heaven to be braved by man? How came that figure there?"

"That is easily explained," said I.

"It is"—he continued—"my cousin, Walter T——, who died for me? Is he not heaven-sent also? See, he moves and nods his grim head at me, and says, 'You shall not escape the vengeance of the Almighty. The nerve shall not be cut, and your agonies must continue to the last moment of your existence.' And who has a better right to speak these flaming words, than he whose cause is vindicated by the powers above—he whose agonies, produced by me—me, wretched, miserable man!—were ended by an unjust death on the scaffold, where I should have expiated the crime for which he suffered. Guard me from that grim spectre! I cannot stand that sight!" And, with a loud crash, he fell on the floor.

In the midst of the confusion produced in my mind by what I had seen and heard, the glare of a revealed mystery flashed upon me; and I shuddered even to think of what might turn out to be true. Could it it be possible that that wretched man whose bones hung before me—whose sufferings at his trial, in the jail, on the scaffold, were unprecedented, and such as no man ever endured—was innocent of the crime for which he was hanged? Even the suspicion was too painful to me; and I recoiled from the skeleton, as my eye, led by my thoughts, rested on the grim memorial. The agitation into which I was thrown rendered me incapable of thought. "Get him home! get him home!" I cried to my apprentice, and sought, in the retirement of another room, some refuge from these sights, and an opportunity of calmly contemplating all the bearings of this apparently dreadful discovery.

My apprentice, with difficulty, got the unhappy man into my coach, and took him home. Next day, I was called, early in the forenoon, by an express from his wife. I found him in bed, in the very room where Mr. T—— was murdered. An attack of his disease was upon him, and his conscience had roused him to a degree bordering on madness.

Vain, indeed, would be my effort to describe what I now saw and heard; the powers of the physical and moral demons that externally and internally, at the same moment, wrung his nerves and fired his brain, seemed to vie with each other in the degree of torture to which they were capable of elevating his sufferings. His broken exclamations shewed that he was more and more convinced that the pain he endured was a part of the punishment of the crime that lay on his conscience; and, being only a foretaste of that he was doomed to suffer in another world, his imagination was haunted by the shadows of coming ills, a thousand times more terrible than were those he was struggling with, dreadful as those were. Screams, prayers, and ejaculations, succeeded each other unremittingly. As Despair threw over him her dark mantle, he raised himself in the bed, and, grasping the bedclothes, wrung them between his hands, and twisted them in intricate torsels round his arms, beating his head against the posts, and gnashing his teeth with the fury of a maniac.