I dare not give the remainder of the scene, except in a verybrief epitome. This company of devils and condemned souls had comeon a holiday, to revel in the discovery of a complicated crime; asfoul a one as ever imagined in their dreadful abode. In the courseof the tale, the reader had been permitted to discover that all theincidents were results of the machinations of the wizard, who hadcunningly devised that Walter Brome should tempt his unknown sisterto guilt and shame, and himself perish by the hand of histwin-brother. I described the glee of the fiends at this hideousconception, and their eagerness to know if it were consummated. Thestory concluded with the Appeal of Alice to the spectre of WalterBrome, his reply, absolving her from every stain; and the tremblingawe with which ghost and devil fled, as from the sinless presence ofan angel.
The sun had gone down. While I held my page of wonders in thefading light, and read how Alice and her brother were left aloneamong the graves, my voice mingled with the sigh of a summer wind,which passed over the hill-top, with the broad and hollow sound asof the flight of unseen spirits. Not a word was spoken till I addedthat the wizard's grave was close beside us, and that the woodwax hadsprouted originally from his unhallowed bones. The ladies started;perhaps their cheeks might have grown pale had not the crimson westbeen blushing on them; but after a moment they began to laugh, whilethe breeze took a livelier motion, as if responsive to their mirth.
I kept an awful solemnity of visage, being, indeed, a little piquedthat a narrative which had good authority in our ancientsuperstitions, and would have brought even a church deacon toGallows Hill, in old witch times, should now be considered toogrotesque and extravagant for timid maids to tremble at. Though itwas past supper time, I detained them a while longer on the hill, andmade a trial whether truth were more powerful than fiction.
We looked again towards the town, no longer arrayed in that icysplendor of earth, tree, and edifice, beneath the glow of a wintrymidnight, which shining afar through the gloom of a century had madeit appear the very home of visions in visionary streets. Anindistinctness had begun to creep over the mass of buildings andblend them with the intermingled tree-tops, except where the roof ofa statelier mansion, and the steeples and brick towers of churches,caught the brightness of some cloud that yet floated in thesunshine. Twilight over the landscape was congenial to the obscurityof time. With such eloquence as my share of feeling and fancy couldsupply, I called back hoar antiquity, and bade my companions imaginean ancient multitude of people, congregated on the hill-side,spreading far below, clustering on the steep old roofs, and climbingthe adjacent heights, wherever a glimpse of this spot might beobtained. I strove to realize and faintly communicate the deep,unutterable loathing and horror, the indignation, the affrightedwonder, that wrinkled on every brow, and filled the universal heart.
See! the whole crowd turns pale and shrinks within itself, as thevirtuous emerge from yonder street. Keeping pace with that devotedcompany, I described them one by one; here tottered a woman in herdotage, knowing neither the crime imputed her, nor its punishment;there another, distracted by the universal madness, till feverishdreams were remembered as realities, and she almost believed herguilt. One, a proud man once, was so broken down by the intolerablehatred heaped upon him, that he seemed to hasten his steps, eager tohide himself in the grave hastily dug at the foot of the gallows. Asthey went slowly on, a mother looked behind, and beheld her peacefuldwelling; she cast her eyes elsewhere, and groaned inwardly yet withbitterest anguish, for there was her little son among the accusers.
I watched the face of an ordained pastor, who walked onward to thesame death; his lips moved in prayer; no narrow petition for himselfalone, but embracing all his fellow-sufferers and the frenziedmultitude; he looked to Heaven and trod lightly up the hill.
