Many years had elapsed since these events took place. A dark and rainy night had succeeded a tempestuous autumnal day, and settled down like a wet mantle over Montreal, wrapping the city in its chilling folds.
The street-lamps with which it was dimly lighted in the early evenings of yore—when oil furnished an obscure foreshadowing of this era of gas, that served only to make "darkness visible"—had gone out one by one, leaving the narrow streets, with their high stone houses overhanging on either side, in utter gloom.
The twinkling of a lantern borne by an invisible pilgrim might be seen—like the transient dancing gleam of a will-o'-the-wisp—revealing occasional glimpses of a tall form by his side clad in the habit of the Society of Jesus. They were threading the narrow course of old St. Paul Street, which they followed until they reached a road that turned and ascended a rising ground to the west, in the direction of a district where there had formerly been a beaver meadow of considerable extent, through which flowed a sluggish brook, but which was rapidly assuming the features now presented by that part of the city lying in the neighborhood of Beaver Hall Block.
Into this road they turned, and, passing the district mentioned, took a path to the left, which led them to the base of the hill on the summit of which the city water-works and reservoir are now situated.
In those days the ascent was by no means easy, and the aged father had to pause frequently to take breath during the course of it. Having reached the height, and rested for a brief space, they turned again to the left into spacious, neglected grounds, surrounding a very large stone mansion which stood unfinished on the side of the mountain, as entirely isolated on that lonely height as if in the midst of vast solitudes, instead of the suburb of a populous and thriving city. So chilling, gloomy, and repulsive were all the features of the lofty edifice and its bleak environs, which had been an open common for many years, that even the reverend father, long accustomed to encounter such varied forms of desolation as the missionary in savage regions must continually meet, recoiled unconsciously as he passed the dismal portal, which no door had ever closed, into the damp atmosphere within. Here the mouldy walls appeared to give shelter only to a multitude of owls and bats, whose wings flapped indignantly at the unwonted gleam of light in their dark dominion, and equally rare intrusion of a guest upon the silence of their retreat.
The man with the lantern passed on in advance, followed slowly and cautiously by his venerable companion, over a narrow platform constructed by laying planks on the timber of the framework, until they came to a remote corner of the building, in which a small room had been awkwardly prepared, and arranged in a manner to render it barely habitable. A more comfortless abode could hardly be imagined. Before the door of this rude apartment they paused, the guide inserted a key in the huge lock, the bolt of which yielded slowly as if fearing to betray its trust, the door creaked harshly on its rusty hinges and gave admittance to the reverend guest.
Guided by the faint glimmer of a taper—standing on a rough block beside a bed on which the form of a man tossing in restless agony was dimly visible, the priest approached the sufferer, addressing some soothing words to him.
"Ah, reverend father! is it you?" he faintly gasped. "It was kind of you to come through the storm this dismal night, and, after your long journey, to seek the lost sheep so utterly unworthy of your care! I am near the close of a misspent and wasted life! Will the worthless wreck offered at the eleventh hour in penitence and tears be accepted? O father! how true were the words you uttered when reproving my sinful course: 'Unless you repent the wrongs you have inflicted, making such requital as remains within your power, a fearful retribution awaits you in this world, and eternal despair in the next.' The first part has been fulfilled—wife, children, family, and friends have fallen from me one by one, and for long years the victim of his own folly and iniquity has lingered on desolate and alone—haunted by visions of retribution and despair. But I have tried to be contrite, and to offer such contrition as I could gain, in anguish and tears at the foot of my Redeemer's cross. May I not hope it will be accepted? How I have longed, reverend father, for your return to Montreal! The first emotion of joy my heart has known for years was imparted when I heard from my attendant that you had at length arrived—just in time to hear my last confession and console my dying hour, if there is indeed comfort for such a sinner. The blood of that Indian chief—singled first of all from his followers for death by my command (because he set his authority against my designs)—and that of his innocent daughter and her nurse, who perished by my means, have set a burning seal upon my guilty soul; while the phantom of my injured wife, taken from me while I was pursuing my unhallowed passion, joins with theirs to reproach and haunt me. I am lost, lost in the horrors of remorse for the triple murder, added to an endless list of misdeeds!
"Peace, my son!" the reverend father said tenderly and firmly—"though your sins are as scarlet, their guilt has not surpassed the bounds of Infinite mercy! Nor has it reached so far as you suppose. The Indian maiden lives. A holy nun in an American convent, she has never ceased her supplications for the salvation of your soul, and for the pardon of her own weakness and disobedience to her father, in yielding her young heart's affections to your importunities before she learned, as she did on the voyage down the river, that you were already married, and sought only to make her your dishonored dupe.
"She urged her horse over the precipice according to instructions from the trapper, who told her to fly with all speed in that direction, and at what point to turn to the river, if pursued and in danger of being overtaken. He also warned her to make no resistance to the current, only to avoid being drawn into whirlpools, but to let it carry her through the gorge to a place where the waters spread into a small lake, on the shore of which, near the foot of the gorge, she would find a singular cave opening toward the water, and easily seen, where she must secrete herself until he should bring her brother to her. In all this she succeeded by the skill in swimming which seems to be part of an Indian's nature. When the trapper and her brother sought the hiding-place—with but faint hope indeed of finding her—so great was her dread of your power and of her own weakness, that she entreated them to keep the fact of her escape concealed, and arrange for her departure with a company of traders belonging to the American stations, who were intending to leave with their wives and pass the winter in a distant city of the United States. They therefore left her, first providing means by which her servant could obtain their food; and after the return of the party to me, those arrangements were made. Upon her arrival in that city, and delivery of a letter from me to the superior of a convent there, she was received into the house, and soon after entered upon her novitiate as one of its members."