“Yet I must try to the very utmost,” he said, “either to break it or make myself be heard by the inmates of the manse, which is my best chance of release.” Accordingly he borrowed as much impetus as the breadth of the vault allowed him, and flung himself upon the door in a series of attacks, shouting at the same time with all his might. But the door stood firm as a rock despite of him; nor could he distinguish, as he listened from time to time, the slightest symptoms of his having been heard by any one. He went to the small grated window which lighted this house of death, and after watching at it for some time, he saw an old woman pass along a footpath beyond the graveyard, with a bundle of sticks upon her head; but she never seemed to hear him when he called upon her. A little afterwards he saw two boys sauntering near the gate of the burying-ground; but though they heard him when he cried, it only made them scamper off, to all appearance mightily terrified.
Chapter II.
With the calmness almost of despair, when the closing eve took away his chance of seeing any more stray passengers that day, the poor youth groped his way to his marble slab, and again sat down with a strange vacuity of heart, as if it would refuse further thought of his dismal situation. A new fear came over him, however, when daylight thickened at the grated window of his low room, and the white marbles grew dark around him. And not without creeping horror did he remember that from this very aisle it was that old Johnny Hogg, a former sexton, was said to have seen a strange vile animal issue forth one moonlight night, run to a neighbouring stream, and after lapping a little, hurry back, trotting over the blue graves, and slinking through beneath the table stones, as if afraid of being shut out from its dull, fat haunt. Hurriedly, yet with keen inspection, was young Sinclair fascinated to look around him over the dim floor; and while the horrid apprehension came over him, that he was just on the point of seeing the two eyes of the gloating beast, white and muddy from its unhallowed surfeits, he drew up his feet on the slab on which he sat, lest it should crawl over them. A thousand tales—true to boyish impressions—crowded on his mind; and by this rapid movement of sympathetic associations, enough of itself, while it lasts, to make the stoutest heart nervous, and from the irritation of his body from other causes, so much was his mind startled from its propriety that he thought he heard the devil ranging through the empty pews of the church; and there seemed to flash before his eyes a thousand hurrying shapes, condemned and fretted ghosts of malignant aspect, that cannot rest in their wormy graves, and milky-curdled babes of untimely birth, that are buried in twilights, never to see the sun.
Soon, however, these silly fears went off, and the tangible evil of his situation again stood forth, and drove him to renew his cries for assistance, and his attacks upon the door, ere he should be quite enfeebled by hunger and disease. Again he had to sit down, after spending his strength in vain.
By degrees, he fell into a stupor of sleep, peopled with strange dreams, in all of which, from natural accordance with his waking conviction that he had that day seen his mother’s burial, her image was the central figure. In danger she was with him—in weariness—in captivity; and when he seemed to be struggling for life, under delirious fever, then, too, she was with him, with her soft assuaging kiss, which was pressed upon his throbbing brow, till his frenzy was cooled away, and he lay becalmed in body and in spirit beneath her love. Under the last modification of his dream, he stood by confused waters, and saw his mother drowning in the floods. He heard her faintly call upon his name; her arms were outstretched to him for help, as she was borne fast away into the dim and wasteful ocean; and, unable to resist this appeal, he stripped off his clothes and plunged in to attempt her rescue. So vivid was this last part of his vision, that in actual correspondence with the impulse of his dream, the poor prodigal in the aisle threw off his clothes to the shirt to prepare himself for swimming to her deliverance. One or two cold ropy drops, which at this moment fell from the vaulted roof upon his neck, woke him distinctly, and recalled him to a recollection of his situation as a captive. But being unable to account for his being naked, he thought that he had lost, or was about to lose, his reason; and, weeping aloud like a little child, he threw himself upon his knees, and cried to God to keep fast his heart and mind from that dismal alienation. He was yet prostrate when he heard feet walking on the echoing pavement of the church; and at the same time a light shone round about him, filling the whole aisle, and showing distinctly the black letters on the white tombstones.
His first almost insane thought was that a miraculous answer was given to his prayer, and that, like the two apostles of old, he had won an angel from heaven to release him from his midnight prison. But the footsteps went away again by the door, and ceased entirely; whilst at the same time the light was withdrawn, leaving him to curse his folly, which, under an absurd hope, had lost an opportunity of immediate disenthralment. He was about to call aloud, to provoke a return of the visitation, when, through the grated window of the aisle, he observed a light among the graves, which he set himself to reconnoitre. It was one of those raw, unwholesome nights, choked up with mists to the very throat, which thicken the breath of old men with asthma, and fill graveyards with gross and rotten beings; and, though probably not more than twenty yards distant, Sinclair could not guess what the light was, so tangled and bedimmed was it with the spongy vapours.
At length he heard human voices, and was glad to perceive the light approaching his window. When the men, whom he now saw were two in number, had got within a few yards of him, he called out,—
“I pray you, good people, be not alarmed; I have been locked up in this aisle to-day, and must die of hunger in it if you do not get me out. You can get into the church, and I doubt not you will find the key of this aisle-door in the sexton’s closet. Now, I hope you have enough of manhood not to let me remain in this horrid place from any silly fears on your part.”
Instead of answering to this demand, the fellows took instantly to their heels, followed by the vehement reproaches of our hero, whose heart at the same time was smitten by the bitter reflection, that every chance of attracting attention to his captivity was likely to be neutralized by the superstitious fears of such as might hear him from his vault. In a few minutes the light again approached, and after much whispering betwixt themselves, one of the men demanded who and what the prisoner was.
“I can only tell you farther,” replied Sinclair, “that I fell asleep in this place during the sermon,—no very creditable confession, you will observe,—and that, when I awoke, I found myself fairly entrapped.”