Devil's Gap [pp. 225-233]

De-il's Gap.
some one said. With a sturdy push from
the powerful shoulder of him who stood
nearest, the feeble fastenings gave way,
and they were in the room. It was vacant. Ernest Moreton was gone-gone
forever. Late in the preceding night, a
ship had sailed from the neighbouring
port of for distant climes; she was
never heard of more. Had the curse of
Cain fallen on all on board? Or does the
murderer still wander in foreign lands,
far from his country and his village
home, an outcast among men-with the
seal of God's displeasure set upon his
brow?
with wild flowers she had gathered, and
from more of which, bestrewed upon her
lap, she seemed busily employed in weaving a wreath or garland to replace the
withered one beside idher. When accosted, she mildly raised her large blue eyes,
with that vacant stare so p ainful to behold, where the light of intellect was
quenched, a look of hopeles s idiocy-as,
humming with low sweet voice a plaintive air, she again resumed, without reply, her occupation.
In answer to some inquiries addressed,
on leaving the church yard, to a labouring man who chanced to pass that way:
" Oh! sir," he replied, " it must have
been the crazy girl who lives up yonder
with the parson you saw. She be harmless, sir, quite innocent. The children
of the village be powerful fond of hershe sings'era songs, and shows them
where the flowers and the berries do
grow, and she be very gentle like with
them. They do tell a story of how her
lover-him as she wtas to marry, sir-was
murdered down yonder by Devil's Gap.
She's never been right in her mind since
I reckon. I ha'nt been long in these
parts and ca'nt say I knows much on it.
You're welcome, sir. Good day, sir."
Pobr Blanche! No more shall sorrow
wring that seared and blighted heart.
Safe at length,
Some two years after the occurrence of
the sad event we have related, the writer
of this sketch was slling slowly through
the picturesque lit: church yard of the
village of B, when he was startled,
in an abrupt turn of the pathway, by
coming suddenly upon what seemed a female figure seated upon a mound of earth,
whose flattened surface wore the aspect
of a grave long made; and at whose
head some kind hands had reared a simple wooden tablet, where might be discerned, in characters almost time-effaced,
the name of him who slept beneath. Her
hair, hanging in wild disorder about a
face where traces of youthful beauty still
lingered blended with the lines of deep
abiding melancholy, evidences of a heart
old in afflictions, was fantastically decked
" As the bird to its sheltering nest,
When the storm on the hills is abroad,
So her spirit hath flown from this world of un rest,
To repose on the bosom of God."
1856.]
233
Xii.
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