“I slept, and it was late next morning when some one called at the wicket of the little fold, where my goats are penned. I arose, and saw a peasant of my acquaintance leading a female strangely muffled up, and casting her eyes on the ground. My heart misgave me. I thought this was the very maid who had been the cause of such atrocious wickedness. Nor were my conjectures ill-founded. Regardless of the clown who stood by in stupid astonishment, she fell to the earth and bathed my hand with tears. Her trembling lips with difficulty enquired after the youth; and, as she spoke, a glow of conscious guilt lightened up her pale countenance.
“The full recollection of her lover’s crimes shot through my memory. I was incensed, and would have spurned her away; but, she clung to my garments and seemed to implore my pity with a look so full of misery, that, relenting, I led her in silence to the extremity of the cliff where the youth was seated, his feet dangling above the sea. His eye was rolling wildly around, but it soon fixed upon the object for whose sake he had doomed himself to perdition.
“Far be it from me to describe their ecstasies, or the eagerness with which they sought each other’s embraces. I indignantly turned my head away; and, driving my goats to a recess amongst the rocks, sat revolving in my mind these strange events. I neglected procuring any provision for my unwelcome guests; and about midnight returned homewards by the light of the moon which shone serenely in the heavens. Almost the first object her beams discovered was the guilty maid sustaining the head of her lover, who had fainted through weakness and want of nourishment. I fetched some dry bread, and dipping it in milk laid it before them. Having performed this duty I set open the door of my hut, and retiring to a neighbouring cavity, there stretched myself on a heap of leaves and offered my prayers to Heaven.
“A thousand fears, till this moment unknown, thronged into my fancy. The shadow of leaves that chequered the entrance to the grot, seemed to assume in my distempered imagination the form of ugly reptiles, and I repeatedly shook my garments. The flow of the distant surges was deepened by my apprehensions into distant groans: in a word, I could not rest; but issuing from the cavern as hastily as my trembling knees would allow, paced along the edge of the precipice. An unaccountable impulse would have hurried my steps, yet such was my terror and shivering, that unable to advance to my hut or retreat to the cavern, I was about to shield myself from the night in a sandy crevice, when a loud shriek pierced my ear. My fears had confused me; I was in fact near my hovel and scarcely three paces from the brink of the cavern: it was thence the cries proceeded.
“Advancing in a cold shudder to its edge, part of which was newly crumbled in, I discovered the form of the young man suspended by one foot to a branch of juniper that grew several feet down: thus dreadfully did he hang over the gulph from the branch bending with his weight. His features were distorted, his eye-balls glared with agony, and his screams became so shrill and terrible that I lost all power of affording assistance. Fixed, I stood with my eyes riveted upon the criminal, who incessantly cried out, ‘O God! O Father! save me if there be yet mercy! save me, or I sink into the abyss!’
“I am convinced he did not see me; for not once did he implore my help. His voice grew faint, and as I gazed intent upon him, the loose thong of leather, which had entangled itself in the branches by which he hung suspended, gave way, and he fell into utter darkness. I sank to the earth in a trance; during which a sound like the rush of pennons assaulted my ear: methought the evil spirit was bearing off his soul; but when I lifted up my eyes nothing stirred; the stillness that prevailed was awful.
“The moon hanging low over the waves afforded a sickly light, by which I perceived some one coming down that white cliff you see before you; and I soon heard the voice of the young woman calling aloud on her guilty lover. She stopped. She repeated again and again her exclamation; but there was no reply. Alarmed and frantic she hurried along the path, and now I saw her on the promontory, and now by yonder pine, devouring with her glances every crevice in the rock. At length perceiving me, she flew to where I stood, by the fatal precipice, and having noticed the fragments fresh crumbled in, pored importunately on my countenance. I continued pointing to the chasm; she trembled not; her tears could not flow; but she divined the meaning. ‘He is lost!’ said she; ‘the earth has swallowed him! but, as I have shared with him the highest joy, so will I partake his torments. I will follow: dare not to hinder me.’
“Like the phantoms I have seen in dreams, she glanced beside me; and, clasping her hands above her head, lifted a steadfast look on the hemisphere, and viewed the moon with an anxiousness that told me she was bidding it farewell for ever. Observing a silken handkerchief on the ground, with which she had but an hour ago bound her lover’s temples, she snatched it up, and imprinting it with burning kisses, thrust it into her bosom. Once more, expanding her arms in the last act of despair and miserable passion, she threw herself, with a furious leap, into the gulph.
“To its margin I crawled on my knees, and there did I remain in the most dreadful darkness; for now the moon was sunk, the sky obscured with storms, and a tempestuous blast ranging the ocean. Showers poured thick upon me, and the lightning, in clear and frequent flashes, gave me terrifying glimpses of yonder accursed chasm.
“Stranger, dost thou believe in our Redeemer? in his most holy mother? in the tenets of our faith?” I answered with reverence, but said her faith and mine were different. “Then,” continued the aged woman, “I will not declare before a heretic what were the visions of that night of vengeance!” She paused; I was silent.