“What happened next?” said Everard. “See that thou speakest the truth.”
“As gospel unexpounded by a steeple-man,” said the Independent; “yet truly it is but little I have to say. I saw my master come down, with a blank, yet resolved air; and when he entered the hall and saw the stranger, he made a pause. The other waved on him as if to follow, and walked out at the portal. My worthy patron seemed as if he were about to follow, yet again paused, when this visitant, be he man or fiend, re-entered, and said, ‘Obey thy doom.
‘By pathless march by greenwood tree,
It is thy weird to follow me—
To follow me through the ghastly moonlight—
To follow me through the shadows of night—
To follow me, comrade, still art thou bound;
I conjure thee by the unstaunch’d wound—
I conjure thee by the last words I spoke
When the body slept and the spirit awoke,
In the very last pangs of the deadly stroke.’
“So saying, he stalked out, and my master followed him into the wood.—I followed also at a distance. But when I came up, my master was alone, and bearing himself as you now behold him.”
“Thou hast had a wonderful memory, friend,” said the Colonel, coldly, “to remember these rhymes in a single recitation—there seems something of practice in all this.”
“A single recitation, my honoured sir?” exclaimed the Independent— “alack, the rhyme is seldom out of my poor master’s mouth, when, as sometimes haps, he is less triumphant in his wrestles with Satan. But it was the first time I ever heard it uttered by another; and, to say truth, he ever seems to repeat it unwillingly, as a child after his pedagogue, and as it was not indited by his own head, as the Psalmist saith.”
“It is singular,” said Everard;—“I have heard and read that the spirits of the slaughtered have strange power over the slayer; but I am astonished to have it insisted upon that there may be truth in such tales. Roger Wildrake—what art thou afraid of, man?—why dost thou shift thy place thus?”
“Fear? it is not fear—it is hate, deadly hate.—I see the murderer of poor Dick before me, and—see, he throws himself into a posture of fence—Sa—sa—say’st thou, brood of a butcher’s mastiff? thou shalt not want an antagonist.”
Ere any one could stop him, Wildrake threw aside his cloak, drew his sword, and almost with a single bound cleared the distance betwixt him and Harrison, and crossed swords with the latter, as he stood brandishing his weapon, as if in immediate expectation of an assailant. Accordingly, the Republican General was not for an instant taken at unawares, but the moment the swords clashed, he shouted, “Ha! I feel thee now, thou hast come in body at last.—Welcome! welcome!—the sword of the Lord and of Gideon!”
“Part them, part them!” cried Everard, as he and Tomkins, at first astonished at the suddenness of the affray, hastened to interfere. Everard, seizing on the cavalier, drew him forcibly backwards, and Tomkins contrived, with risk and difficulty, to master Harrison’s sword, while the General exclaimed, “Ha! two to one—two to one!—thus fight demons.” Wildrake, on his side, swore a dreadful oath, and added, “Markham, you have cancelled every obligation I owed you—they are all out of sight—gone, d—n me!”