Poor Leycraft! The belief which his repentant
soul had cherished for years, lay dead
at his heart. One by one every hope had crumbled.
The boy, such was the conviction each
unanswering face pressed upon him, the boy
was dead. To that pale young form, cold and
deathward, as to him it always lay stretched in
the wood, there was no resurrection. It was
gone into another world, and seemed dragging
him, by a gentle violence he could not resist,
after. The remorse which, though sometimes

[figure description] Page 242.[end figure description]

torpid, had been never entirely subdued, uncoiled
itself more and more, and pierced him
with strokes which caused him to cry aloud
with anguish. He could not be silent nor at
ease. He had fled from house to house, lodging
to lodging, where the horrible secret he was
constantly urged to babble, caused men and
women to fall away from his presence like that
of one sick with the plague. Even in cellars
and cheap resorts, where the language of crime
and wrong is a familiar dialect, they avoided
his conversation, and begged him, in God's
name, to ease his soul to parsons and magistrates,
and not to them. Even the grim tenpin-player
had deserted him. Leyeraft's constant
wakings at the dead of night, and the
dreadful reproaches with which his soul labored
against itself, were too much for him.
So he flew from place to place; from employment
to employment. He tried, and in vain,
to quell his unhappy thoughts, to cheat himself
of that dreadful belief of the boy's death,
by a constant change of work. He was now
alone, in a rope-walk, where Ishmael Small's
prying ubiquity had found him. The walk
was a long, low-roofed shed. It was pitched
in a hollow, on the outskirts of the city, and
was out of sight of human habitation, and beyond
the sound of human voice. About it nothing
but rank grass and odious weeds, thick
with thorns and death-white blossoms, grew
and pressed forward to the very door. On
either side the shed was pierced with small
narrow windows, its whole length, looking out
on one hand, on a sluggish vein of water that
oozed through the hard soil, and on the other,
upon the field of shrubs and brambles. Here
Leycraft, at the earliest hour of the day—it was
just sunrise, and the sun, striking the shed on
its eastern end, filled the walk with shadows—
stood, his beard untrimmed, and his waist encompassed
with unworked flax, giving him the
appearance of a satyr.

He stood at the remotest end and looked
down its whole dark length, with an eye which
grew blank and unsettled when it found nothing
to rest upon. Then it passed from window
to window back again, more blank than
ever; no friendly face looked in, not even the
miserable picker who used to beg the refuse
flax and ropes'-ends. He would have given
the world if only Ishmael had come and
taunted him in the old fashion. And then,
with something of prayer and earnest imploring
in his features, he shot his glance into a corner,
where two wrens had held their nest for
years, borrowing tow and threads of twine
from the floor to build. The two wrens were
gone. Not a sparrow nor a fly crossed the unlucky
window-sills. A dread stillness was
present, resting like a cloud upon the roof and
thickening the air. The very walk seemed to
have gone into decay; it tottered and shook
like one in a palsy, as the silent winds hurried
past. What wonder if Leycraft's soul was appalled
within him?

“Lightnings blast me!” he muttered, struggling
against the feeling that crept upon him,
and made him cold to the heart; “what do they
mean by leaving me here? Why don't the
sharks and indefatigables come and take me and
hang me?” Here he cast a sideway look at the
rope he had begun to twist. “I wish they'd
send out the green wagon and treat me to a
ride to the Tombs. Why don't they? What
do they mean? They don't know their duty—
that's plain. I ought to be kept in a cell till
this cursed fever's gone off; and then I should
be hung out to dry.” He laughed at the fancy;
but it was a wretched, soulless laugh, which
betrayed him more than his words. His thoughts
took a new turn, and, catching his breath, in
the surprise with which another and deeper
purpose than that of yielding his body to the
magistrates glided into his mind, he went on
now faster than ever with his task; drawing
out the flax with a secret satisfaction—as he
paced backward along the hard, cold floor—
every now and then putting forth his whole
strength, and twisting the strands as firm and
close as iron. It was wonderful with what care
and skill he framed his work, choosing the
cleanest flax in all the bunch, where there was
no spot nor blemish—his eye, in its supernatural
keenness, could have detected a flyblow—
shaping each strand delicately to an equal size,
and twisting them all so cleanly together, that
the cord, as fast as formed, was admirably
round and firm, and not a thread or fibre hung
loose. There was a strange pleasure in Leycraft's
look when he saw how well he prospered
in his work; but even in the midst of
his task a shudder came upon him; his face
grew dark and livid by turns; and his eyes
wandered about and seemed to dwell on a terrible
and appalling company that was present
only to him. For a time his hands refused to
do the service to which they had been constrained,
and struggled against it, as if they
too were endowed with a fearful consciousness.
In this pause and agitation of his spirit, he
searched his garments, and brought forth from
his breast-pocket, a small, square parcel, which
he proceeded, tremblingly, to open, fixing his
eyes more keenly and steadily as each envelope
was removed. His hand at length held disclosed
a half-bracelet, with its clasp; and while
he regarded it he shuddered anew, and writhed
as in sudden pain. What was he to do with
this? He could not bear it about with him
longer—it seemed too like the child's voice
whispering in his ear; frail tress as it was, it
held him fast, as a cable, to the spot where the
deed had been done; its brassy clasp glared
upon him like a serpent's eye. It seemed to
him now like the dead boy's legacy—for he had
taken it almost from his hand; carrying with
it, at all seasons of day and night, its own
avenging conditions. What was to be done
with it? At this moment, and while the question
demanded, every minute, an answer more
loudly, a shrunken and troubled face looked in

[figure description] Page 243.[end figure description]

at one of the windows of the walk. It was the
face of an old man, who, full of an anguish different—
ah! how different, from that of Leycraft—
had wandered in the suburbs, many days,
and many weary, weary nights, too, and who
had strayed, in the vacancy that had come upon
him, to that place. It was Hobbleshank;
who, when he had gathered thought to peruse
the person before him more closely, and saw
what unearthly look had settled in his features—
how white, and trenched with deep, dark
lines as it was, like a scarred coffin-plate it
seemed—recoiled from the window, and gave
signs of retreating altogether.

“For Heaven's good sake!” cried Leycraft,
in a tone of anguish that went to the old man's
heart, “don't leave me now. Stay only an
hour or so, if not so long, five minutes may do;
five minutes, at least. Come, come, you'll
give me five minutes!”

The old man returned to the window, but
resisted steadily all entreaty to come in.

“This is cruel!” said Leycraft, aloud, and
then, partly to himself, “the last man with
whom I shall change word; and he won't give
me his company as a Christian, but stands there
gazing through a window on me, as if I were a
wild beast at a show.”

At that moment, Leycraft, who had bent
down while uttering these words to himself,
raised his head and caught the eye of the old
man—his neck stretched forward its utmost
length—fastened on the bracelet which he held
in his open hand. He caught it back at once,
and restoring it quickly to its enclosure, thrust
it into his breast.

There was something fearful in that old
man's face, now that the light fell upon it;—
it was the very face that had watched him all
through the night, in the garret of the farm-house,
and against which he had contended.
This was another blow that staggered him on
swifter to his fate. He went on stranding and
coiling the rope, holding every feature rigid,
and bracing his nerves with all his will, lest
his purpose should give way. The cord was
finished. Leycraft rose up, wiped his brow,
on which a cold, thick sweat had gathered—
went to the window, and while Hobbleshank
could not move in his surprise, he placed in
his hand the parcel he had concealed.

“There,” said he, “take that; it's a bequest
from a man that will never know man more.
It's the gift of a young friend, the dearest I
ever had, and I wish you'd make much of it.”

He then proceeded, without another word,
to put every utensil of the walk in its place;
coiled up the rope he had made with so much
care, in the crown of his hat; closed the windows,
leaving Hobbleshank without, lost in
vague wonder and alarm; drew to the door,
and putting the key in a safe concealment,
where the other workmen might find it when
they came—as they would in an hour or two—
he withdrew from the walk, which was now
dark, and close as a tomb. He shaped his way
toward the river, looking back not once, but
choosing the obscurest paths and bye-ways,
and following them steadily. Once he leaped
a wall, and crouching as he ran, he skirted
along the fence for half a mile or more, and
then he got into an untravelled road, where he
made good speed, and with a comfort—such
comfort as his condition allowed—to himself.
In leaving this he was forced to pass a public
way where there was a constant throng of
travel; and, while in act of crossing, hearing
the rattling of wheels from the city, he fled
into a blackberry meadow, and there lay hid in
the bushes for better than an hour.

He was now within sight of the woods; and
when, emerging from his ambush, his eye first
fell upon them, he shrunk back, and his feet
for a moment refused to bear him on. It was
an instant only; and then he laughed to himself
at his folly in spoiling the good gait he had
been travelling.

At the woods—the black, dull, hemlock
woods, which lay like a dark stain upon the
earth—he did not enter at a point which would
bear him soonest to the place he sought; but
fetched a circuit of better than a furlong, and
looking about him with a trembling eye, he
crept into them, as if by stealth. The sun had
not yet made good his strength, and the woods
still swarmed with bats and birds of darkness,
which kept about, and shut back the light by
the wide-spread wings with which they oppressed
the air. Under foot the ground was
heavy with a sluggish sweat, rather than dew,
and through blind paths and among tufts of
useless grass, Leycraft picked his way; winding
about in long circles, and only approaching
the spot by degrees. His eyes wandered between
the trees, as though a phantom were
walking just before him; if he had cast a look
upward but once, he would have seen how
blue and peaceful was the sky above him—but
this he heeded not. He had come to the edge
of a by-path that cut through the woods; in a
minute more and he would be on the very spot
itself. He paused and sat upon a fallen trunk
to gather his strength. What he had done
and what he was to do came upon him in all
their hideousness, and his heart misgave him.
He would have retreated if he could. At that
moment he heard a step approaching; a man
passed by, and as Leycraft looked out, oh how
his soul begged and implored that he would
come and reason with him, and steal from his
heart the purpose which clung like a dagger in
its very core! The cold sweat stood upon his
brow, in the agony with which he was moved.
The man bore in his hand a walking-stick,
with which, with a determined look, he smote
a tall weed that grew in the path, to the ground.
There was clearly no hope for Leycraft. He
sprung up, and almost at a bound, stood upon
the earth where, more than twenty years ago
he had cast down a young child, as he would a
frail vessel, that all its life might be spilled
and never gathered up again. He knew the

p265-247 [figure description] Page 244.[end figure description]

place—knew it at once, down to the smallest
blade that grew about. The rock was there,
under the lee of which the basket that held the
child had been set; the old gnarled branch
stretched over it—older now than when it
shook its young summer leaves upon the ground.
Every circumstance and incident of the act
rushed back into his mind with a fearful distinctness.
How he had borne the child from
the farm-house in his arms—the very look of
the nurse who had intrusted it to him in the
belief that a little air would be so reviving and
refreshing to the poor dear—how, when he
heard the laugh and prattle of young children
at play in an orchard through which he passed,
he had repented of any part in the deed—and
how, again, when he bethought him of the rage
of the broker, and the spite he would wreak
on him through the debtor's jail, he had hurried
on. There was one good thought, too, that
came back: that when he had laid the child
where he was to be left to die—for his soul refused
to do it rougher violence—he had lifted
a leaf, shed by the overhanging branch upon
its little lips, so giving it another chance to
live. He remembered, too, how he had severed
the bracelet about its neck, in twain, taking
one of its parts and leaving the other, with the
hope that the child, should it live to escape its
perilous exposure, might be recognised and reclaimed.

As he was pondering, the dead child seemed
to spring from the ground, rising slowly upon
him, and growing rigid in every limb as he
rose, until he stood regarding him with a fixed
stony eye, his little arm stretched toward him
in menace, more terrible than if it had been a
mailed hand aimed against his breast. He
staggered before it. The wind, which had been
gathering since sunrise, swept through the
wood with a howl like that of an angry populace.
Leycraft, whose face and brow dripped
with sweat, and whose body was as chill and
comfortless as if it had been steeped in the
river, east a fearful glance behind him, and
snatching off his hat in desperate haste, he
stepped upon the rock, and made fast an end
of the cord to the old branch, which the tree
held out like a withered arm toward him. The
tree creaked—there was an awful groan, and
the forfeit was paid. At that moment a crow
flew screeching from a neighboring tree-top
straight through the wood, and, as it rose
toward the clouds that lowered on its flight, it
seemed like the dark spirit of the man, on its
way to the angry heaven whose judgment he
had dared to invoke.