Septimius Felton;

Or, The Elixir Of Life. 

By Nathanial Hawthorne

1883

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 

The existence of this story, posthumously published, was not known to anyone but Hawthorne himself, until some time after his death, when themanuscript was found among his papers. The preparation and copying of hisNote-Books for the press occupied the most of Mrs. Hawthorne's availabletime during the interval from 1864 to 1870; but in the latter year, havingdecided to publish the unfinished romance, she began the task of puttingtogether its loose sheets and deciphering the handwriting, which, towardsthe close of Hawthorne's life, had grown somewhat obscure and uncertain. Her death occurred while she was thus engaged, and the transcription wascompleted by her daughters. The book was then issued simultaneously inAmerica and England, in 1871. 

Although "Septimius Felton" appeared so much later than "The Marble Faun, "it was conceived and, in another form, begun before the Italian romancehad presented itself to the author's mind. The legend of a bloody footleaving its imprint where it passed, which figures so prominently in thefollowing fiction, was brought to Hawthorne's notice on a visit toSmithell's Hall, Lancashire, England. [Footnote: See _EnglishNote-Books, _ April 7, and August 25, 1855. ] Only five days afterhearing of it, he made a note in his journal, referring to "my Romance, "which had to do with a plot involving the affairs of a family establishedboth in England and New England; and it seems likely that he had alreadybegun to associate the bloody footstep with this project. What isextraordinary, and must be regarded as an unaccountable coincidence--oneof the strange premonitions of genius--is that in 1850, before he had everbeen to England and before he knew of the existence of Smithell's Hall, hehad jotted down in his Note-Book, written in America, this suggestion:"The print in blood of a naked foot to be traced through the street of atown. " The idea of treating in fiction the attempt to renew youth or toattain an earthly immortality had engaged his fancy quite early in hiscareer, as we discover from "Doctor Heidegger's Experiment, " in the"Twice-Told Tales. " In 1840, also, we find in the journal: "If a man weresure of living forever, he would not care about his offspring. " The"Mosses from an Old Manse" supply another link in this train ofreflection; for "The Virtuoso's Collection" includes some of the elixirvitae "in an antique sepulchral urn. " The narrator there representshimself as refusing to quaff it. "'No; I desire not an earthlyimmortality, ' said I. 'Were man to live longer on earth, the spiritualwould die out of him. .. . There is a celestial something within us thatrequires, after a certain time, the atmosphere of heaven to preserve itfrom ruin. '" On the other hand, just before hearing, for the first time, the legend of Smithell's Hall, he wrote in his English journal:--

"God himself cannot compensate us for being born for any period short ofeternity. All the misery endured here constitutes a claim for anotherlife, and still more _all the happiness;_ because all true happinessinvolves something more than the earth owns, and needs something more thana mortal capacity for the enjoyment of it. " It is sufficiently clear thathe had meditated on the main theme of "Septimius Felton, " at intervals, for many years. 

When, in August, 1855, Hawthorne went by invitation to Smithell's Hall, thelady of the manor, on his taking leave, asked him "to write a ghost-storyfor her house;" and he observes in his notes, "the legend is a good one. "Three years afterwards, in 1858, on the eve of departure for France andItaly, he began to sketch the outline of a romance laid in England, andhaving for its hero an American who goes thither to assert his inheritedrights in an old manor-house possessing the peculiarity of a supposedbloody foot-print on the threshold-stone. This sketch, which appears inthe present edition as "The Ancestral Footstep, " was in journal form, thestory continuing from day to day, with the dates attached. There remainsalso the manuscript without elate, recently edited under the title "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret, " which bears a resemblance to some particulars in"Septimius Felton. "

Nothing further seems to have been done in this direction by the authoruntil he had been to Italy, had written "The Marble Faun, " and againreturned to The Wayside, his home at Concord. It was then, in 1861, thathe took up once more the "Romance of Immortality, " as the sub-title of theEnglish edition calls it. "I have not found it possible, " he wrote to Mr. Bridge, who remained his confidant, "to occupy my mind with its usualtrash and nonsense during these anxious times; but as the autumn advances, I myself sitting down at my desk and blotting successive sheets of paperas of yore. " Concerning this place, The Wayside, he had said in a letterto George William Curtis, in 1852: "I know nothing of the history of thehouse, except Thoreau's telling me that it was inhabited a generation ortwo ago by a man who believed he should never die. " It was this legendarypersonage whom he now proceeded to revive and embody as Septimius; and thescene of the story was placed at The Wayside itself and the neighboringhouse, belonging to Mr. Bronson Alcott, both of which stand at the base ofa low ridge running beside the Lexington road, in the village of Concord. Rose Garfield is mentioned as living "in a small house, the site of whichis still indicated by the cavity of a cellar, in which I this very summerplanted some sunflowers. " The cellar-site remains at this day distinctlyvisible near the boundary of the land formerly owned by Hawthorne. 

Attention may here perhaps appropriately be called to the fact that some ofthe ancestors of President Garfield settled at Weston, not many miles fromConcord, and that the name is still borne by dwellers in the vicinity. Oneof the last letters written by the President was an acceptance of aninvitation to visit Concord; and it was his intention to journey thitherby carriage, incognito, from Boston, passing through the scenes wherethose ancestors had lived, and entering the village by the old Lexingtonroad, on which The Wayside faces. It is an interesting coincidence thatHawthorne should have chosen for his first heroine's name, eitherintentionally or through unconscious association, this one which belongedto the region. 

The house upon which the story was thus centred, and where it was written, had been a farm-house, bought and for a time occupied by Hawthorneprevious to his departure for Europe. On coming back to it, he made someadditions to the old wooden structure, and caused to be built a low tower, which rose above the irregular roofs of the older and newer portions, thussupplying him with a study lifted out of reach of noise or interruption, and in a slight degree recalling the tower in which he had taken so muchpleasure at the Villa Montauto. The study was extremely simple in itsappointments, being finished chiefly in stained wood, with a vaultedplaster ceiling, and containing, besides a few pictures and some plainfurniture, a writing-table, and a shelf at which Hawthorne sometimes wrotestanding. A story has gone abroad and is widely believed, that, onmounting the steep stairs leading to this study, he passed through atrap-door and afterwards placed upon it the chair in which he sat, so thatintrusion or interruption became physically impossible. It is whollyunfounded. There never was any trap-door, and no precaution of the kinddescribed was ever taken. Immediately behind the house the hill rises inartificial terraces, which, during the romancer's residence, were grassyand planted with fruit-trees. He afterwards had evergreens set out there, and directed the planting of other trees, which still attest hispreference for thick verdure. The twelve acres running back over the hillwere closely covered with light woods, and across the road lay a leveltract of eight acres more, which included a garden and orchard. From hisstudy Hawthorne could overlook a good part of his modest domain; the viewembraced a stretch of road lined with trees, wide meadows, and the hillsacross the shallow valley. The branches of trees rose on all sides as ifto embower the house, and birds and bees flew about his casement, throughwhich came the fresh perfumes of the woods, in summer. 

In this spot "Septimius Felton" was written; but the manuscript, thrownaside, was mentioned in the Dedicatory Preface to "Our Old Home" as an"abortive project. " As will be found explained in the Introductory Notesto "The Dolliver Romance" and "The Ancestral Footstep, " that phase of thesame general design which was developed in the "Dolliver" was intended totake the place of this unfinished sketch, since resuscitated. 

G. P. L. 

PREFACE. 

The following story is the last written by my father. It is printed as itwas found among his manuscripts. I believe it is a striking specimen ofthe peculiarities and charm of his style, and that it will have an addedinterest for brother artists, and for those who care to study the methodof his composition, from the mere fact of its not having received hisfinal revision. In any case, I feel sure that the retention of thepassages within brackets (_e. G. _ p. 253), which show how my fatherintended to amplify some of the descriptions and develop more fully one ortwo of the character studies, will not be regretted by appreciativereaders. My earnest thanks are due to Mr. Robert Browning for his kindassistance and advice in interpreting the manuscript, otherwise sodifficult to me. 

UNA HAWTHORNE. 

SEPTIMIUS FELTON;

OR, THE ELIXIR OF LIFE. 

It was a day in early spring; and as that sweet, genial time of year andatmosphere calls out tender greenness from the ground, --beautiful flowers, or leaves that look beautiful because so long unseen under the snow anddecay, --so the pleasant air and warmth had called out three young people, who sat on a sunny hill-side enjoying the warm day and one another. Forthey were all friends: two of them young men, and playmates from boyhood;the third, a girl, who, two or three years younger than themselves, hadbeen the object of their boy-love, their little rustic, childishgallantries, their budding affections; until, growing all towards manhoodand womanhood, they had ceased to talk about such matters, perhapsthinking about them the more. 

These three young people were neighbors' children, dwelling in houses thatstood by the side of the great Lexington road, along a ridgy hill thatrose abruptly behind them, its brow covered with a wood, and whichstretched, with one or two breaks and interruptions, into the heart of thevillage of Concord, the county town. It was in the side of this hill that, according to tradition, the first settlers of the village had burrowed incaverns which they had dug out for their shelter, like swallows andwoodchucks. As its slope was towards the south, and its ridge and crowningwoods defended them from the northern blasts and snow-drifts, it was anadmirable situation for the fierce New England winter; and the temperaturewas milder, by several degrees, along this hill-side than on theunprotected plains, or by the river, or in any other part of Concord. Sothat here, during the hundred years that had elapsed since the firstsettlement of the place, dwellings had successively risen close to thehill's foot, and the meadow that lay on the other side of the road--afertile tract--had been cultivated; and these three young people were thechildren's children's children of persons of respectability who had dweltthere, --Rose Garfield, in a small house, the site of which is stillindicated by the cavity of a cellar, in which I this very past summerplanted some sunflowers to thrust their great disks out from the hollowand allure the bee and the humming-bird; Robert Hagburn, in a house ofsomewhat more pretension, a hundred yards or so nearer to the village, standing back from the road in the broader space which the retreatinghill, cloven by a gap in that place, afforded; where some elms intervenedbetween it and the road, offering a site which some person of a naturaltaste for the gently picturesque had seized upon. Those same elms, ortheir successors, still flung a noble shade over the same old house, whichthe magic hand of Alcott has improved by the touch that throws grace, amiableness, and natural beauty over scenes that have little pretension inthemselves. 

Now, the other young man, Septimius Felton, dwelt in a small wooden house, then, I suppose, of some score of years' standing, --a two-story house, gabled before, but with only two rooms on a floor, crowded upon by thehill behind, --a house of thick walls, as if the projector had that sturdyfeeling of permanence in life which incites people to make strong theirearthly habitations, as if deluding themselves with the idea that theycould still inhabit them; in short, an ordinary dwelling of a well-to-doNew England farmer, such as his race had been for two or three generationspast, although there were traditions of ancestors who had led lives ofthought and study, and possessed all the erudition that the universitiesof England could bestow. Whether any natural turn for study had descendedto Septimius from these worthies, or how his tendencies came to bedifferent from those of his family, --who, within the memory of theneighborhood, had been content to sow and reap the rich field in front oftheir homestead, --so it was, that Septimius had early manifested a tastefor study. By the kind aid of the good minister of the town he had beenfitted for college; had passed through Cambridge by means of what littlemoney his father had left him and by his own exertions in school-keeping;and was now a recently decorated baccalaureate, with, as was understood, apurpose to devote himself to the ministry, under the auspices of thatreverend and good friend whose support and instruction had already stoodhim in such stead. 

Now here were these young people, on that beautiful spring morning, sittingon the hill-side, a pleasant spectacle of fresh life, --pleasant, as ifthey had sprouted like green things under the influence of the warm sun. The girl was very pretty, a little freckled, a little tanned, but with aface that glimmered and gleamed with quick and cheerful expressions; aslender form, not very large, with a quick grace in its movements; sunnyhair that had a tendency to curl, which she probably favored at suchmoments as her household occupation left her; a sociable and pleasantchild, as both of the young men evidently thought. Robert Hagburn, onemight suppose, would have been the most to her taste; a ruddy, burly youngfellow, handsome, and free of manner, six feet high, famous through theneighborhood for strength and athletic skill, the early promise of whatwas to be a man fit for all offices of active rural life, and to be, inmature age, the selectman, the deacon, the representative, the colonel. Asfor Septimius, let him alone a moment or two, and then they would see him, with his head bent down, brooding, brooding, his eyes fixed on some chip, some stone, some common plant, any commonest thing, as if it were the clewand index to some mystery; and when, by chance startled out of thesemeditations, he lifted his eyes, there would be a kind of perplexity, adissatisfied, foiled look in them, as if of his speculations he found noend. Such was now the case, while Robert and the girl were running on witha gay talk about a serious subject, so that, gay as it was, it wasinterspersed with little thrills of fear on the girl's part, of excitementon Robert's. Their talk was of public trouble. 

"My grandfather says, " said Rose Garfield, "that we shall never be able tostand against old England, because the men are a weaker race than heremembers in his day, --weaker than his father, who came from England, --andthe women slighter still; so that we are dwindling away, grandfatherthinks; only a little sprightlier, he says sometimes, looking at me. "

"Lighter, to be sure, " said Robert Hagburn; "there is the lightness of theEnglishwomen compressed into little space. I have seen them and know. Andas to the men, Rose, if they have lost one spark of courage and strengththat their English forefathers brought from the old land, --lost any onegood quality without having made it up by as good or better, --then, for mypart, I don't want the breed to exist any longer. And this war, that theysay is coming on, will be a good opportunity to test the matter. Septimius! Don't you think so?"

"Think what?" asked Septimius, gravely, lifting up his head. 

"Think! why, that your countrymen are worthy to live, " said Robert Hagburn, impatiently. "For there is a question on that point. "

"It is hardly worth answering or considering, " said Septimius, looking athim thoughtfully. "We live so little while, that (always setting aside theeffect on a future existence) it is little matter whether we live or no. "

"Little matter!" said Rose, at first bewildered, then laughing, --"littlematter! when it is such a comfort to live, so pleasant, so sweet!"

"Yes, and so many things to do, " said Robert; "to make fields yieldproduce; to be busy among men, and happy among the women-folk; to play, work, fight, and be active in many ways. "

"Yes; but so soon stilled, before your activity has come to any definiteend, " responded Septimius, gloomily. "I doubt, if it had been left to mychoice, whether I should have taken existence on such terms; so muchtrouble of preparation to live, and then no life at all; a ponderousbeginning, and nothing more. "

"Do you find fault with Providence, Septimius?" asked Rose, a feeling ofsolemnity coming over her cheerful and buoyant nature. Then she burst outa-laughing. "How grave he looks, Robert; as if he had lived two or threelives already, and knew all about the value of it. But I think it wasworth while to be born, if only for the sake of one such pleasant springmorning as this; and God gives us many and better things when these arepast. "

"We hope so, " said Septimius, who was again looking on the ground. "But whoknows?"

"I thought you knew, " said Robert Hagburn. "You have been to college, andhave learned, no doubt, a great many things. You are a student oftheology, too, and have looked into these matters. Who should know, if notyou?"

"Rose and you have just as good means of ascertaining these points as I, "said Septimius; "all the certainty that can be had lies on the surface, asit should, and equally accessible to every man or woman. If we try togrope deeper, we labor for naught, and get less wise while we try to bemore so. If life were long enough to enable us thoroughly to sift thesematters, then, indeed!--but it is so short!"

"Always this same complaint, " said Robert. "Septimius, how long do you wishto live?"

"Forever!" said Septimius. "It is none too long for all I wish to know. "

"Forever?" exclaimed Rose, shivering doubtfully. "Ah, there would comemany, many thoughts, and after a while we should want a little rest. "

"Forever?" said Robert Hagburn. "And what would the people do who wish tofill our places? You are unfair, Septimius. Live and let live! Turn about!Give me my seventy years, and let me go, --my seventy years of what thislife has, --toil, enjoyment, suffering, struggle, fight, rest, --only let mehave my share of what's going, and I shall be content. "

"Content with leaving everything at odd ends; content with being nothing, as you were before!"

"No, Septimius, content with heaven at last, " said Rose, who had come outof her laughing mood into a sweet seriousness. "Oh dear! think what a wornand ugly thing one of these fresh little blades of grass would seem if itwere not to fade and wither in its time, after being green in its time. "

"Well, well, my pretty Rose, " said Septimius apart, "an immortal weed isnot very lovely to think of, that is true; but I should be content withone thing, and that is yourself, if you were immortal, just as you are atseventeen, so fresh, so dewy, so red-lipped, so golden-haired, so gay, sofrolicsome, so gentle. "

"But I am to grow old, and to be brown and wrinkled, gray-haired and ugly, "said Rose, rather sadly, as she thus enumerated the items of her decay, "and then you would think me all lost and gone. But still there might beyouth underneath, for one that really loved me to see. Ah, SeptimiusFelton! such love as would see with ever-new eyes is the true love. " Andshe ran away and left him suddenly, and Robert Hagburn departing at thesame time, this little knot of three was dissolved, and Septimius wentalong the wayside wall, thoughtfully, as was his wont, to his owndwelling. He had stopped for some moments on the threshold, vaguelyenjoying, it is probable, the light and warmth of the new spring day andthe sweet air, which was somewhat unwonted to the young man, because hewas accustomed to spend much of his day in thought and study within doors, and, indeed, like most studious young men, was overfond of the fireside, and of making life as artificial as he could, by fireside heat andlamplight, in order to suit it to the artificial, intellectual, and moralatmosphere which he derived from books, instead of living healthfully inthe open air, and among his fellow-beings. Still he felt the pleasure ofbeing warmed through by this natural heat, and, though blinking a littlefrom its superfluity, could not but confess an enjoyment and cheerfulnessin this flood of morning light that came aslant the hill-side. While hethus stood, he felt a friendly hand laid upon his shoulder, and, lookingup, there was the minister of the village, the old friend of Septimius, towhose advice and aid it was owing that Septimius had followed hisinstincts by going to college, instead of spending a thwarted anddissatisfied life in the field that fronted the house. He was a man ofmiddle age, or little beyond, of a sagacious, kindly aspect; theexperience, the lifelong, intimate acquaintance with many concerns of hispeople being more apparent in him than the scholarship for which he hadbeen early distinguished. A tanned man, like one who labored in his owngrounds occasionally; a man of homely, plain address, which, when occasioncalled for it, he could readily exchange for the polished manner of onewho had seen a more refined world than this about him. 

"Well, Septimius, " said the minister, kindly, "have you yet come to anyconclusion about the subject of which we have been talking?"

"Only so far, sir, " replied Septimius, "that I find myself every day lessinclined to take up the profession which I have had in view so many years. I do not think myself fit for the sacred desk. "

"Surely not; no one is, " replied the clergyman; "but if I may trust my ownjudgment, you have at least many of the intellectual qualifications thatshould adapt you to it. There is something of the Puritan character inyou, Septimius, derived from holy men among your ancestors; as, forinstance, a deep, brooding turn, such as befits that heavy brow; adisposition to meditate on things hidden; a turn for meditativeinquiry, --all these things, with grace to boot, mark you as the germ of aman who might do God service. Your reputation as a scholar stands high atcollege. You have not a turn for worldly business. "

"Ah, but, sir, " said Septimius, casting down his heavy brows, "I lacksomething within. "

"Faith, perhaps, " replied the minister; "at least, you think so. "

"Cannot I know it?" asked Septimius. 

"Scarcely, just now, " said his friend. "Study for the ministry; bind yourthoughts to it; pray; ask a belief, and you will soon find you have it. Doubts may occasionally press in; and it is so with every clergyman. Butyour prevailing mood will be faith. "

"It has seemed to me, " observed Septimius, "that it is not the prevailingmood, the most common one, that is to be trusted. This is habit, formality, the shallow covering which we close over what is real, andseldom suffer to be blown aside. But it is the snake-like doubt thatthrusts out its head, which gives us a glimpse of reality. Surely suchmoments are a hundred times as real as the dull, quiet moments of faith orwhat you call such. "

"I am sorry for you, " said the minister; "yet to a youth of your frame ofcharacter, of your ability I will say, and your requisition for somethingprofound in the grounds of your belief, it is not unusual to meet thistrouble. Men like you have to fight for their faith. They fight in thefirst place to win it, and ever afterwards to hold it. The Devil tiltswith them daily and often seems to win. "

"Yes; but, " replied Septimius, "he takes deadly weapons now. If he meet mewith the cold pure steel of a spiritual argument, I might win or lose, andstill not feel that all was lost; but he takes, as it were, a great clodof earth, massive rocks and mud, soil and dirt, and flings it at meoverwhelmingly; so that I am buried under it. "

"How is that?" said the minister. "Tell me more plainly. "

"May it not be possible, " asked Septimius, "to have too profound a sense ofthe marvellous contrivance and adaptation of this material world torequire or believe in anything spiritual? How wonderful it is to see itall alive on this spring day, all growing, budding! Do we exhaust it inour little life? Not so; not in a hundred or a thousand lives. The wholerace of man, living from the beginning of time, have not, in all theirnumber and multiplicity and in all their duration, come in the least toknow the world they live in! And how is this rich world thrown away uponus, because we live in it such a moment! What mortal work has ever beendone since the world began! Because we have no time. No lesson is taught. We are snatched away from our study before we have learned the alphabet. As the world now exists, I confess it to you frankly, my dear pastor andinstructor, it seems to me all a failure, because we do not live longenough. "

"But the lesson is carried on in another state of being!"

"Not the lesson that we begin here, " said Septimius. "We might as welltrain a child in a primeval forest, to teach him how to live in a Europeancourt. No, the fall of man, which Scripture tells us of, seems to me tohave its operation in this grievous shortening of earthly existence, sothat our life here at all is grown ridiculous. "

"Well, Septimius, " replied the minister, sadly, yet not as one shocked bywhat he had never heard before, "I must leave you to struggle through thisform of unbelief as best you may, knowing that it is by your own effortsthat you must come to the other side of this slough. We will talk furtheranother time. You are getting worn out, my young friend, with much studyand anxiety. It were well for you to live more, for the present, in thisearthly life that you prize so highly. Cannot you interest yourself in thestate of this country, in this coming strife, the voice of which nowsounds so hoarsely and so near us? Come out of your thoughts and breatheanother air. "

"I will try, " said Septimius. 

"Do, " said the minister, extending his hand to him, "and in a little timeyou will find the change. "

He shook the young man's hand kindly, and took his leave, while Septimiusentered his house, and turning to the right sat down in his study, where, before the fireplace, stood the table with books and papers. On theshelves around the low-studded walls were more books, few in number but ofan erudite appearance, many of them having descended to him from learnedancestors, and having been brought to light by himself after long lying industy closets; works of good and learned divines, whose wisdom he hadhappened, by help of the Devil, to turn to mischief, reading them by thelight of hell-fire. For, indeed, Septimius had but given the clergyman themerest partial glimpse of his state of mind. He was not a new beginner indoubt; but, on the contrary, it seemed to him as if he had never beenother than a doubter and questioner, even in his boyhood; believingnothing, although a thin veil of reverence had kept him from questioningsome things. And now the new, strange thought of the sufficiency of theworld for man, if man were only sufficient for that, kept recurring tohim; and with it came a certain sense, which he had been conscious ofbefore, that he, at least, might never die. The feeling was not peculiarto Septimius. It is an instinct, the meaning of which is mistaken. We havestrongly within us the sense of an undying principle, and we transfer thattrue sense to this life and to the body, instead of interpreting it justlyas the promise of spiritual immortality. 

So Septimius looked up out of his thoughts, and said proudly: "Why should Idie? I cannot die, if worthy to live. What if I should say this momentthat I will not die, not till ages hence, not till the world is exhausted?Let other men die, if they choose, or yield; let him that is strong enoughlive!"

After this flush of heroic mood, however, the glow subsided, and poorSeptimius spent the rest of the day, as was his wont, poring over hisbooks, in which all the meanings seemed dead and mouldy, and like pressedleaves (some of which dropped out of the books as he opened them), brown, brittle, sapless; so even the thoughts, which when the writers hadgathered them seemed to them so brightly colored and full of life. Then hebegan to see that there must have been some principle of life left out ofthe book, so that these gathered thoughts lacked something that had giventhem their only value. Then he suspected that the way truly to live andanswer the purposes of life was not to gather up thoughts into books, where they grew so dry, but to live and still be going about, full ofgreen wisdom, ripening ever, not in maxims cut and dry, but a wisdom readyfor daily occasions, like a living fountain; and that to be this, it wasnecessary to exist long on earth, drink in all its lessons, and not to dieon the attainment of some smattering of truth; but to live all the morefor that; and apply it to mankind and increase it thereby. 

Everything drifted towards the strong, strange eddy into which his mind hadbeen drawn: all his thoughts set hitherward. 

So he sat brooding in his study until the shrill-voiced old woman--an aunt, who was his housekeeper and domestic ruler--called him to dinner, --afrugal dinner, --and chided him for seeming inattentive to a dish of earlydandelions which she had gathered for him; but yet tempered her severitywith respect for the future clerical rank of her nephew, and for hisalready being a bachelor of arts. The old woman's voice spoke outside ofSeptimius, rambling away, and he paying little heed, till at last dinnerwas over, and Septimius drew back his chair, about to leave the table. 

"Nephew Septimius, " said the old woman, "you began this meal to-day withoutasking a blessing, you get up from it without giving thanks, and you soonto be a minister of the Word. "

"God bless the meat, " replied Septimius (by way of blessing), "and make itstrengthen us for the life he means us to bear. Thank God for our food, "he added (by way of grace), "and may it become a portion in us of animmortal body. "

"That sounds good, Septimius, " said the old lady. "Ah! you'll be a mightyman in the pulpit, and worthy to keep up the name of yourgreat-grandfather, who, they say, made the leaves wither on a tree withthe fierceness of his blast against a sin. Some say, to be sure, it was anearly frost that helped him. "

"I never heard that before, Aunt Keziah, " said Septimius. 

"I warrant you no, " replied his aunt. "A man dies, and his greatnessperishes as if it had never been, and people remember nothing of him onlywhen they see his gravestone over his old dry bones, and say he was a goodman in his day. "

"What truth there is in Aunt Keziah's words!" exclaimed Septimius. "And howI hate the thought and anticipation of that contemptuous appreciation of aman after his death! Every living man triumphs over every dead one, as helies, poor and helpless, under the mould, a pinch of dust, a heap ofbones, an evil odor! I hate the thought! It shall not be so!"

It was strange how every little incident thus brought him back to that onesubject which was taking so strong hold of his mind; every avenue ledthitherward; and he took it for an indication that nature had intended, byinnumerable ways, to point out to us the great truth that death was analien misfortune, a prodigy, a monstrosity, into which man had only fallenby defect; and that even now, if a man had a reasonable portion of hisoriginal strength in him, he might live forever and spurn death. 

Our story is an internal one, dealing as little as possible with outwardevents, and taking hold of these only where it cannot be helped, in orderby means of them to delineate the history of a mind bewildered in certainerrors. We would not willingly, if we could, give a lively and picturesquesurrounding to this delineation, but it is necessary that we should advertto the circumstances of the time in which this inward history was passing. We will say, therefore, that that night there was a cry of alarm passingall through the succession of country towns and rural communities that layaround Boston, and dying away towards the coast and the wilder forestborders. Horsemen galloped past the line of farm-houses shouting alarm!alarm! There were stories of marching troops coming like dreams throughthe midnight. Around the little rude meeting-houses there was here andthere the beat of a drum, and the assemblage of farmers with theirweapons. So all that night there was marching, there was mustering, therewas trouble; and, on the road from Boston, a steady march of soldiers'feet onward, onward into the land whose last warlike disturbance had beenwhen the red Indians trod it. 

Septimius heard it, and knew, like the rest, that it was the sound ofcoming war. "Fools that men are!" said he, as he rose from bed and lookedout at the misty stars; "they do not live long enough to know the valueand purport of life, else they would combine together to live long, instead of throwing away the lives of thousands as they do. And whatmatters a little tyranny in so short a life? What matters a form ofgovernment for such ephemeral creatures?"

As morning brightened, these sounds, this clamor, --or something that was inthe air and caused the clamor, --grew so loud that Septimius seemed to feelit even in his solitude. It was in the atmosphere, --storm, wildexcitement, a coming deed. Men hurried along the usually lonely road ingroups, with weapons in their hands, --the old fowling-piece of seven-footbarrel, with which the Puritans had shot ducks on the river and WaldenPond; the heavy harquebus, which perhaps had levelled one of King Philip'sIndians; the old King gun, that blazed away at the French of Louisburg orQuebec, --hunter, husbandman, all were hurrying each other. It was a goodtime, everybody felt, to be alive, a nearer kindred, a closer sympathybetween man and man; a sense of the goodness of the world, of thesacredness of country, of the excellence of life; and yet its slightaccount compared with any truth, any principle; the weighing of thematerial and ethereal, and the finding the former not worth considering, when, nevertheless, it had so much to do with the settlement of thecrisis. The ennobling of brute force; the feeling that it had its godlikeside; the drawing of heroic breath amid the scenes of ordinary life, sothat it seemed as if they had all been transfigured since yesterday. Oh, high, heroic, tremulous juncture, when man felt himself almost an angel;on the verge of doing deeds that outwardly look so fiendish! Oh, strangerapture of the coming battle! We know something of that time now; we thathave seen the muster of the village soldiery on the meeting-house green, and at railway stations; and heard the drum and fife, and seen thefarewells; seen the familiar faces that we hardly knew, now that we feltthem to be heroes; breathed higher breath for their sakes; felt our eyesmoistened; thanked them in our souls for teaching us that nature is yetcapable of heroic moments; felt how a great impulse lifts up a people, andevery cold, passionless, indifferent spectator, --lifts him up intoreligion, and makes him join in what becomes an act of devotion, a prayer, when perhaps he but half approves. 

Septimius could not study on a morning like this. He tried to say tohimself that he had nothing to do with this excitement; that his studiouslife kept him away from it; that his intended profession was that ofpeace; but say what he might to himself, there was a tremor, a bubblingimpulse, a tingling in his ears, --the page that he opened glimmered anddazzled before him. 

"Septimius! Septimius!" cried Aunt Keziah, looking into the room, "inHeaven's name, are you going to sit here to-day, and the redcoats comingto burn the house over our heads? Must I sweep you out with thebroomstick? For shame, boy! for shame!"

"Are they coming, then, Aunt Keziah?" asked her nephew. "Well, I am not afighting-man. "

"Certain they are. They have sacked Lexington, and slain the people, andburnt the meeting-house. That concerns even the parsons; and you reckonyourself among them. Go out, go out, I say, and learn the news!"

Whether moved by these exhortations, or by his own stifled curiosity, Septimius did at length issue from his door, though with that reluctancewhich hampers and impedes men whose current of thought and interest runsapart from that of the world in general; but forth he came, feelingstrangely, and yet with a strong impulse to fling himself headlong intothe emotion of the moment. It was a beautiful morning, spring-like andsummer-like at once. If there had been nothing else to do or think of, such a morning was enough for life only to breathe its air and beconscious of its inspiring influence. 

Septimius turned along the road towards the village, meaning to mingle withthe crowd on the green, and there learn all he could of the rumors thatvaguely filled the air, and doubtless were shaping themselves into variousforms of fiction. 

As he passed the small dwelling of Rose Garfield, she stood on thedoorstep, and bounded forth a little way to meet him, looking frightened, excited, and yet half pleased, but strangely pretty; prettier than everbefore, owing to some hasty adornment or other, that she would never havesucceeded so well in giving to herself if she had had more time to do itin. 

"Septimius--Mr. Felton, " cried she, asking information of him who, of allmen in the neighborhood, knew nothing of the intelligence afloat; but itshowed a certain importance that Septimius had with her. "Do you reallythink the redcoats are coming? Ah, what shall we do? What shall we do? Butyou are not going to the village, too, and leave us all alone?"

"I know not whether they are coming or no, Rose, " said Septimius, stoppingto admire the young girl's fresh beauty, which made a double stroke uponhim by her excitement, and, moreover, made her twice as free with him asever she had been before; for there is nothing truer than that anybreaking up of the ordinary state of things is apt to shake women out oftheir proprieties, break down barriers, and bring them into perilousproximity with the world. "Are you alone here? Had you not better takeshelter in the village?"

"And leave my poor, bedridden grandmother!" cried Rose, angrily. "You knowI can't, Septimius. But I suppose I am in no danger. Go to the village, ifyou like. "

"Where is Robert Hagburn?" asked Septimius. 

"Gone to the village this hour past, with his grandfather's old firelock onhis shoulder, " said Rose; "he was running bullets before daylight. "

"Rose, I will stay with you, " said Septimius. 

"Oh gracious, here they come, I'm sure!" cried Rose. "Look yonder at thedust. Mercy! a man at a gallop!"

In fact, along the road, a considerable stretch of which was visible, theyheard the clatter of hoofs and saw a little cloud of dust approaching atthe rate of a gallop, and disclosing, as it drew near, a hatlesscountryman in his shirt-sleeves, who, bending over his horse's neck, applied a cart-whip lustily to the animal's flanks, so as to incite him tomost unwonted speed. At the same time, glaring upon Rose and Septimius, helifted up his voice and shouted in a strange, high tone, that communicatedthe tremor and excitement of the shouter to each auditor: "Alarum! alarum!alarum! The redcoats! The redcoats! To arms! alarum!"

And trailing this sound far wavering behind him like a pennon, the eagerhorseman dashed onward to the village. 

"Oh dear, what shall we do?" cried Rose, her eyes full of tears, yetdancing with excitement. "They are coming! they are coming! I hear thedrum and fife. "

"I really believe they are, " said Septimius, his cheek flushing and growingpale, not with fear, but the inevitable tremor, half painful, halfpleasurable, of the moment. "Hark! there was the shrill note of a fife. Yes, they are coming!"

He tried to persuade Rose to hide herself in the house; but that youngperson would not be persuaded to do so, clinging to Septimius in a waythat flattered while it perplexed him. Besides, with all the girl'sfright, she had still a good deal of courage, and much curiosity too, tosee what these redcoats were of whom she heard such terrible stories. 

"Well, well, Rose, " said Septimius; "I doubt not we may stay here withoutdanger, --you, a woman, and I, whose profession is to be that of peace andgood-will to all men. They cannot, whatever is said of them, be on anerrand of massacre. We will stand here quietly; and, seeing that we do notfear them, they will understand that we mean them no harm. "

They stood, accordingly, a little in front of the door by the well-curb, and soon they saw a heavy cloud of dust, from amidst which shone bayonets;and anon, a military band, which had hitherto been silent, struck up, withdrum and fife, to which the tramp of a thousand feet fell in regularorder; then came the column, moving massively, and the redcoats who seemedsomewhat wearied by a long night-march, dusty, with bedraggled gaiters, covered with sweat which had rundown from their powdered locks. Nevertheless, these ruddy, lusty Englishmen marched stoutly, as men thatneeded only a half-hour's rest, a good breakfast, and a pot of beerapiece, to make them ready to face the world. Nor did their faces lookanywise rancorous; but at most, only heavy, cloddish, good-natured, andhumane. 

"O heavens, Mr. Felton!" whispered Rose, "why should we shoot these men, orthey us? they look kind, if homely. Each of them has a mother and sisters, I suppose, just like our men. "

"It is the strangest thing in the world that we can think of killing them, "said Septimius. "Human life is so precious. "

Just as they were passing the cottage, a halt was called by the commandingofficer, in order that some little rest might get the troops into a bettercondition and give them breath before entering the village, where it wasimportant to make as imposing a show as possible. During this brief stop, some of the soldiers approached the well-curb, near which Rose andSeptimius were standing, and let down the bucket to satisfy their thirst. A young officer, a petulant boy, extremely handsome, and of gay andbuoyant deportment, also came up. 

"Get me a cup, pretty one, " said he, patting Rose's cheek with greatfreedom, though it was somewhat and indefinitely short of rudeness; "amug, or something to drink out of, and you shall have a kiss for yourpains. "

"Stand off, sir!" said Septimius, fiercely; "it is a coward's part toinsult a woman. "

"I intend no insult in this, " replied the handsome young officer, suddenlysnatching a kiss from Rose, before she could draw back. "And if you thinkit so, my good friend, you had better take your weapon and get as muchsatisfaction as you can, shooting at me from behind a hedge. "

Before Septimius could reply or act, --and, in truth, the easy presumptionof the young Englishman made it difficult for him, an inexperiencedrecluse as he was, to know what to do or say, --the drum beat a little tap, recalling the soldiers to their rank and to order. The young officerhastened back, with a laughing glance at Rose, and a light, contemptuouslook of defiance at Septimius, the drums rattling out in full beat, andthe troops marched on. 

"What impertinence!" said Rose, whose indignant color made her look prettyenough almost to excuse the offence. 

It is not easy to see how Septimius could have shielded her from theinsult; and yet he felt inconceivably outraged and humiliated at thethought that this offence had occurred while Rose was under hisprotection, and he responsible for her. Besides, somehow or other, he wasangry with her for having undergone the wrong, though certainly mostunreasonably; for the whole thing was quicker done than said. 

"You had better go into the house now, Rose, " said he, "and see to yourbedridden grandmother. "

"And what will you do, Septimius?" asked she. 

"Perhaps I will house myself, also, " he replied. "Perhaps take yonder proudredcoat's counsel, and shoot him behind a hedge. "

"But not kill him outright; I suppose he has a mother and a sweetheart, thehandsome young officer, " murmured Rose pityingly to herself. 

Septimius went into his house, and sat in his study for some hours, in thatunpleasant state of feeling which a man of brooding thought is apt toexperience when the world around him is in a state of intense action, which he finds it impossible to sympathize with. There seemed to be astream rushing past him, by which, even if he plunged into the midst ofit, he could not be wet. He felt himself strangely ajar with the humanrace, and would have given much either to be in full accord with it, or tobe separated from it forever. 

"I am dissevered from it. It is my doom to be only a spectator of life; tolook on as one apart from it. Is it not well, therefore, that, sharingnone of its pleasures and happiness, I should be free of its fatalitiesits brevity? How cold I am now, while this whirlpool of public feeling iseddying around me! It is as if I had not been born of woman!"

Thus it was that, drawing wild inferences from phenomena of the mind andheart common to people who, by some morbid action within themselves, areset ajar with the world, Septimius continued still to come round to thatstrange idea of undyingness which had recently taken possession of him. And yet he was wrong in thinking himself cold, and that he felt nosympathy in the fever of patriotism that was throbbing through hiscountrymen. He was restless as a flame; he could not fix his thoughts uponhis book; he could not sit in his chair, but kept pacing to and fro, whilethrough the open window came noises to which his imagination gave diverseinterpretation. Now it was a distant drum; now shouts; by and by therecame the rattle of musketry, that seemed to proceed from some point moredistant than the village; a regular roll, then a ragged volley, thenscattering shots. Unable any longer to preserve this unnaturalindifference, Septimius snatched his gun, and, rushing out of the house, climbed the abrupt hill-side behind, whence he could see a long waytowards the village, till a slight bend hid the uneven road. It was quitevacant, not a passenger upon it. But there seemed to be confusion in thatdirection; an unseen and inscrutable trouble, blowing thence towards him, intimated by vague sounds, --by no sounds. Listening eagerly, however, heat last fancied a mustering sound of the drum; then it seemed as if itwere coming towards him; while in advance rode another horseman, the samekind of headlong messenger, in appearance, who had passed the house withhis ghastly cry of alarum; then appeared scattered countrymen, with gunsin their hands, straggling across fields. Then he caught sight of theregular array of British soldiers, filling the road with their front, andmarching along as firmly as ever, though at a quick pace, while he fanciedthat the officers looked watchfully around. As he looked, a shot rangsharp from the hill-side towards the village; the smoke curled up, andSeptimius saw a man stagger and fall in the midst of the troops. Septimiusshuddered; it was so like murder that he really could not tell thedifference; his knees trembled beneath him; his breath grew short, notwith terror, but with some new sensation of awe. 

Another shot or two came almost simultaneously from the wooded height, butwithout any effect that Septimius could perceive. Almost at the samemoment a company of the British soldiers wheeled from the main body, and, dashing out of the road, climbed the hill, and disappeared into the woodand shrubbery that veiled it. There were a few straggling shots, by whomfired, or with what effect, was invisible, and meanwhile the main body ofthe enemy proceeded along the road. They had now advanced so nigh thatSeptimius was strangely assailed by the idea that he might, with the gunin his hand, fire right into the midst of them, and select any man of thatnow hostile band to be a victim. How strange, how strange it is, thisdeep, wild passion that nature has implanted in us to be the death of ourfellow-creatures, and which coexists at the same time with horror!Septimius levelled his weapon, and drew it up again; he marked a mountedofficer, who seemed to be in chief command, whom he knew that he couldkill. But no! he had really no such purpose. Only it was such atemptation. And in a moment the horse would leap, the officer would falland lie there in the dust of the road, bleeding, gasping, breathing inspasms, breathing no more. 

While the young man, in these unusual circumstances, stood watching themarching of the troops, he heard the noise of rustling boughs, and thevoices of men, and soon understood that the party, which he had seenseparate itself from the main body and ascend the hill, was now marchingalong on the hill-top, the long ridge which, with a gap or two, extendedas much as a mile from the village. One of these gaps occurred a littleway from where Septimius stood. They were acting as flank guard, toprevent the up-roused people from coming so close to the main body as tofire upon it. He looked and saw that the detachment of British wasplunging down one side of this gap, with intent to ascend the other, sothat they would pass directly over the spot where he stood; a slightremoval to one side, among the small bushes, would conceal him. He steppedaside accordingly, and from his concealment, not without drawing quickerbreaths, beheld the party draw near. They were more intent upon the spacebetween them and the main body than upon the dense thicket of birch-trees, pitch-pines, sumach, and dwarf oaks, which, scarcely yet beginning to budinto leaf, lay on the other side, and in which Septimius lurked. 

[_Describe how their faces affected him, passing so near; how strangethey seemed_. ]

They had all passed, except an officer who brought up the rear, and who hadperhaps been attracted by some slight motion that Septimius made, --somerustle in the thicket; for he stopped, fixed his eyes piercingly towardsthe spot where he stood, and levelled a light fusil which he carried. "Stand out, or I shoot, " said he. 

Not to avoid the shot, but because his manhood felt a call upon it not toskulk in obscurity from an open enemy, Septimius at once stood forth, andconfronted the same handsome young officer with whom those fierce wordshad passed on account of his rudeness to Rose Garfield. Septimius's fierceIndian blood stirred in him, and gave a murderous excitement. 

"Ah, it is you!" said the young officer, with a haughty smile. "You meant, then, to take up with my hint of shooting at me from behind a hedge? Thisis better. Come, we have in the first place the great quarrel between me aking's soldier, and you a rebel; next our private affair, on account ofyonder pretty girl. Come, let us take a shot on either score!"

The young officer was so handsome, so beautiful, in budding youth; therewas such a free, gay petulance in his manner; there seemed so little ofreal evil in him; he put himself on equal ground with the rustic Septimiusso generously, that the latter, often so morbid and sullen, never felt agreater kindness for fellow-man than at this moment for this youth. 

"I have no enmity towards you, " said he; "go in peace. "

"No enmity!" replied the officer. "Then why were you here with your gunamongst the shrubbery? But I have a mind to do my first deed of arms onyou; so give up your weapon, and come with me as prisoner. "

"A prisoner!" cried Septimius, that Indian fierceness that was in himarousing itself, and thrusting up its malign head like a snake. "Never! Ifyou would have me, you must take my dead body. "

"Ah well, you have pluck in you, I see, only it needs a considerablestirring. Come, this is a good quarrel of ours. Let us fight it out. Standwhere you are, and I will give the word of command. Now; ready, aim, fire!"

As the young officer spoke the three last words, in rapid succession, heand his antagonist brought their firelocks to the shoulder, aimed andfired. Septimius felt, as it were, the sting of a gadfly passing acrosshis temple, as the Englishman's bullet grazed it; but, to his surprise andhorror (for the whole thing scarcely seemed real to him), he saw theofficer give a great start, drop his fusil, and stagger against a tree, with his hand to his breast. He endeavored to support himself erect, but, failing in the effort, beckoned to Septimius. 

"Come, my good friend, " said he, with that playful, petulant smile flittingover his face again. "It is my first and last fight. Let me down as softlyas you can on mother earth, the mother of both you and me; so we arebrothers; and this may be a brotherly act, though it does not look so, norfeel so. Ah! that was a twinge indeed!"

"Good God!" exclaimed Septimius. "I had no thought of this, no malicetowards you in the least!"

"Nor I towards you, " said the young man. "It was boy's play, and the end ofit is that I die a boy, instead of living forever, as perhaps I otherwisemight. "

"Living forever!" repeated Septimius, his attention arrested, even at thatbreathless moment, by words that rang so strangely on what had been hisbrooding thought. 

"Yes; but I have lost my chance, " said the young officer. Then, asSeptimius helped him to lie against the little hillock of a decayed andburied stump, "Thank you; thank you. If you could only call back one of mycomrades to hear my dying words. But I forgot. You have killed me, andthey would take your life. "

In truth, Septimius was so moved and so astonished, that he probably wouldhave called back the young man's comrades, had it been possible; but, marching at the swift rate of men in peril, they had already gone faronward, in their passage through the shrubbery that had ceased to rustlebehind them. 

"Yes; I must die here!" said the young man, with a forlorn expression, asof a school-boy far away from home, "and nobody to see me now but you, whohave killed me. Could you fetch me a drop of water? I have a greatthirst. "

Septimius, in a dream of horror and pity, rushed down the hill-side; thehouse was empty, for Aunt Keziah had gone for shelter and sympathy to someof the neighbors. He filled a jug with cold water, and hurried back to thehill-top, finding the young officer looking paler and more deathlikewithin those few moments. 

"I thank you, my enemy that was, my friend that is, " murmured he, faintlysmiling. "Methinks, next to the father and mother that gave us birth, thenext most intimate relation must be with the man that slays us, whointroduces us to the mysterious world to which this is but the portal. Youand I are singularly connected, doubt it not, in the scenes of the unknownworld. "

"Oh, believe me, " cried Septimius, "I grieve for you like a brother!"

"I see it, my dear friend, " said the young officer; "and though my blood ison your hands, I forgive you freely, if there is anything to forgive. ButI am dying, and have a few words to say, which you must hear. You haveslain me in fair fight, and my spoils, according to the rules and customsof warfare, belong to the victor. Hang up my sword and fusil over yourchimney-place, and tell your children, twenty years hence, how they werewon. My purse, keep it or give it to the poor. There is something, herenext my heart, which I would fain have sent to the address which I willgive you. "

Septimius, obeying his directions, took from his breast a miniature thathung round it; but, on examination, it proved that the bullet had passeddirectly through it, shattering the ivory, so that the woman's face itrepresented was quite destroyed. 

"Ah! that is a pity, " said the young man; and yet Septimius thought thatthere was something light and contemptuous mingled with the pathos in histones. "Well, but send it; cause it to be transmitted, according to theaddress. "

He gave Septimius, and made him take down on a tablet which he had abouthim, the name of a hall in one of the midland counties of England. 

"Ah, that old place, " said he, "with its oaks, and its lawn, and its park, and its Elizabethan gables! I little thought I should die here, so faraway, in this barren Yankee land. Where will you bury me?"

As Septimius hesitated to answer, the young man continued: "I would like tohave lain in the little old church at Whitnash, which comes up before menow, with its low, gray tower, and the old yew-tree in front, hollow withage, and the village clustering about it, with its thatched houses. Iwould be loath to lie in one of your Yankee graveyards, for I have adistaste for them, --though I love you, my slayer. Bury me here, on thisvery spot. A soldier lies best where he falls. "

"Here, in secret?" exclaimed Septimius. 

"Yes; there is no consecration in your Puritan burial-grounds, " said thedying youth, some of that queer narrowness of English Churchism cominginto his mind. "So bury me here, in my soldier's dress. Ah! and my watch!I have done with time, and you, perhaps, have a long lease of it; so takeit, not as spoil, but as my parting gift. And that reminds me of one otherthing. Open that pocket-book which you have in your hand. "

Septimius did so, and by the officer's direction took from one of itscompartments a folded paper, closely written in a crabbed hand; it wasconsiderably worn in the outer folds, but not within. There was also asmall silver key in the pocket-book. 

"I leave it with you, " said the officer; "it was given me by an uncle, alearned man of science, who intended me great good by what he there wrote. Reap the profit, if you can. Sooth to say, I never read beyond the firstlines of the paper. "

Septimius was surprised, or deeply impressed, to see that through thispaper, as well as through the miniature, had gone his fatalbullet, --straight through the midst; and some of the young man's blood, saturating his dress, had wet the paper all over. He hardly thoughthimself likely to derive any good from what it had cost a human life, taken (however uncriminally) by his own hands, to obtain. 

"Is there anything more that I can do for you?" asked he, with genuinesympathy and sorrow, as he knelt by his fallen foe's side. 

"Nothing, nothing, I believe, " said he. "There was one thing I might haveconfessed; if there were a holy man here, I might have confessed, andasked his prayers; for though I have lived few years, it has been longenough to do a great wrong! But I will try to pray in my secret soul. Turnmy face towards the trunk of the tree, for I have taken my last look atthe world. There, let me be now. "

Septimius did as the young man requested, and then stood leaning againstone of the neighboring pines, watching his victim with a tender concernthat made him feel as if the convulsive throes that passed through hisframe were felt equally in his own. There was a murmuring from the youth'slips which seemed to Septimius swift, soft, and melancholy, like the voiceof a child when it has some naughtiness to confess to its mother atbedtime; contrite, pleading, yet trusting. So it continued for a fewminutes; then there was a sudden start and struggle, as if he werestriving to rise; his eyes met those of Septimius with a wild, troubledgaze, but as the latter caught him in his arms, he was dead. Septimiuslaid the body softly down on the leaf-strewn earth, and tried, as he hadheard was the custom with the dead, to compose the features distorted bythe dying agony. He then flung himself on the ground at a little distance, and gave himself up to the reflections suggested by the strangeoccurrences of the last hour. 

He had taken a human life; and, however the circumstances might excusehim, --might make the thing even something praiseworthy, and that would becalled patriotic, --still, it was not at once that a fresh country youthcould see anything but horror in the blood with which his hand wasstained. It seemed so dreadful to have reduced this gay, animated, beautiful being to a lump of dead flesh for the flies to settle upon, andwhich in a few hours would begin to decay; which must be put forthwithinto the earth, lest it should be a horror to men's eyes; that deliciousbeauty for woman to love; that strength and courage to make him famousamong men, --all come to nothing; all probabilities of life in one sogifted; the renown, the position, the pleasures, the profits, the keenecstatic joy, --this never could be made up, --all ended quite; for the darkdoubt descended upon Septimius, that, because of the very fitness that wasin this youth to enjoy this world, so much the less chance was thereof hisbeing fit for any other world. What could it do for him there, --thisbeautiful grace and elegance of feature, --where there was no form, nothingtangible nor visible? what good that readiness and aptness for associatingwith all created things, doing his part, acting, enjoying, when, under thechanged conditions of another state of being, all this adaptedness wouldfail? Had he been gifted with permanence on earth, there could not havebeen a more admirable creature than this young man; but as his fate hadturned out, he was a mere grub, an illusion, something that nature hadheld out in mockery, and then withdrawn. A weed might grow from his dustnow; that little spot on the barren hill-top, where he had desired to beburied, would be greener for some years to come, and that was all thedifference. Septimius could not get beyond the earthiness; his feeling wasas if, by an act of violence, he had forever cut off a happy humanexistence. And such was his own love of life and clinging to it, peculiarto dark, sombre natures, and which lighter and gayer ones can never know, that he shuddered at his deed, and at himself, and could with difficultybear to be alone with the corpse of his victim, --trembled at the thoughtof turning his face towards him. 

Yet he did so, because he could not endure the imagination that the deadyouth was turning his eyes towards him as he lay; so he came and stoodbeside him, looking down into his white, upturned face. But it waswonderful! What a change had come over it since, only a few moments ago, he looked at that death-contorted countenance! Now there was a high andsweet expression upon it, of great joy and surprise, and yet a quietudediffused throughout, as if the peace being so very great was what hadsurprised him. The expression was like a light gleaming and glowing withinhim. Septimius had often, at a certain space of time after sunset, lookingwestward, seen a living radiance in the sky, --the last light of the deadday that seemed just the counterpart of this death-light in the youngman's face. It was as if the youth were just at the gate of heaven, which, swinging softly open, let the inconceivable glory of the blessed cityshine upon his face, and kindle it up with gentle, undisturbingastonishment and purest joy. It was an expression contrived by God'sprovidence to comfort; to overcome all the dark auguries that the physicalugliness of death inevitably creates, and to prove by the divine glory onthe face, that the ugliness is a delusion. It was as if the dead manhimself showed his face out of the sky, with heaven's blessing on it, andbade the afflicted be of good cheer, and believe in immortality. 

Septimius remembered the young man's injunctions to bury him there, on thehill, without uncovering the body; and though it seemed a sin and shame tocover up that beautiful body with earth of the grave, and give it to theworm, yet he resolved to obey. 

Be it confessed that, beautiful as the dead form looked, and guiltless asSeptimius must be held in causing his death, still he felt as if he shouldbe eased when it was under the ground. He hastened down to the house, andbrought up a shovel and a pickaxe, and began his unwonted task ofgrave-digging, delving earnestly a deep pit, sometimes pausing in histoil, while the sweat-drops poured from him, to look at the beautiful claythat was to occupy it. Sometimes he paused, too, to listen to the shotsthat pealed in the far distance, towards the east, whither the battle hadlong since rolled out of reach and almost out of hearing. It seemed tohave gathered about itself the whole life of the land, attending it alongits bloody course in a struggling throng of shouting, shooting men, sostill and solitary was everything left behind it. It seemed the verymidland solitude of the world where Septimius was delving at the grave. Heand his dead were alone together, and he was going to put the body underthe sod, and be quite alone. 

The grave was now deep, and Septimius was stooping down into its depthsamong dirt and pebbles, levelling off the bottom, which he considered tobe profound enough to hide the young man's mystery forever, when a voicespoke above him; a solemn, quiet voice, which he knew well. 

"Septimius! what are you doing here?"

He looked up and saw the minister. 

"I have slain a man in fair fight, " answered he, "and am about to bury himas he requested. I am glad you are come. You, reverend sir, can fitly saya prayer at his obsequies. I am glad for my own sake; for it is verylonely and terrible to be here. "

He climbed out of the grave, and, in reply to the minister's inquiries, communicated to him the events of the morning, and the youth's strangewish to be buried here, without having his remains subjected to the handsof those who would prepare it for the grave. The minister hesitated. 

"At an ordinary time, " said he, "such a singular request would of coursehave to be refused. Your own safety, the good and wise rules that make itnecessary that all things relating to death and burial should be donepublicly and in order, would forbid it. "

"Yes, " replied Septimius; "but, it may be, scores of men will fall to-day, and be flung into hasty graves without funeral rites; without its everbeing known, perhaps, what mother has lost her son. I cannot but thinkthat I ought to perform the dying request of the youth whom I have slain. He trusted in me not to uncover his body myself, nor to betray it to thehands of others. "

"A singular request, " said the good minister, gazing with deep interest atthe beautiful dead face, and graceful, slender, manly figure. "What couldhave been its motive? But no matter. I think, Septimius, that you arebound to obey his request; indeed, having promised him, nothing short ofan impossibility should prevent your keeping your faith. Let us lose notime, then. "

With few but deeply solemn rites the young stranger was laid by theminister and the youth who slew him in his grave. A prayer was made, andthen Septimius, gathering some branches and twigs, spread them over theface that was turned upward from the bottom of the pit, into which the sungleamed downward, throwing its rays so as almost to touch it. The twigspartially hid it, but still its white shone through. Then the ministerthrew a handful of earth upon it, and, accustomed as he was to burials, tears fell from his eyes along with the mould. 

"It is sad, " said he, "this poor young man, coming from opulence, no doubt, a dear English home, to die here for no end, one of the first-fruits of abloody war, --so much privately sacrificed. But let him rest, Septimius. Iam sorry that he fell by your hand, though it involves no shadow of acrime. But death is a thing too serious not to melt into the nature of aman like you. "

"It does not weigh upon my conscience, I think, " said Septimius; "though Icannot but feel sorrow, and wish my hand were as clean as yesterday. Itis, indeed, a dreadful thing to take human life. "

"It is a most serious thing, " replied the minister; "but perhaps we are aptto over-estimate the importance of death at any particular moment. If thequestion were whether to die or to live forever, then, indeed, scarcelyanything should justify the putting a fellow-creature to death. But sinceit only shortens his earthly life, and brings a little forward a changewhich, since God permits it, is, we may conclude, as fit to take placethen as at any other time, it alters the case. I often think that thereare many things that occur to us in our daily life, many unknown crises, that are more important to us than this mysterious circumstance of death, which we deem the most important of all. All we understand of it is, thatit takes the dead person away from our knowledge of him, which, while welive with him, is so very scanty. "

"You estimate at nothing, it seems, his earthly life, which might have beenso happy. "

"At next to nothing, " said the minister; "since, as I have observed, itmust, at any rate, have closed so soon. "

Septimius thought of what the young man, in his last moments, had said ofhis prospect or opportunity of living a life of interminable length, andwhich prospect he had bequeathed to himself. But of this he did not speakto the minister, being, indeed, ashamed to have it supposed that he wouldput any serious weight on such a bequest, although it might be that thedark enterprise of his nature had secretly seized upon this idea, and, though yet sane enough to be influenced by a fear of ridicule, was busyincorporating it with his thoughts. 

So Septimius smoothed down the young stranger's earthy bed, and returned tohis home, where he hung up the sword over the mantel-piece in his study, and hung the gold watch, too, on a nail, --the first time he had ever hadpossession of such a thing. Nor did he now feel altogether at ease in hismind about keeping it, --the time-measurer of one whose mortal life he hadcut off. A splendid watch it was, round as a turnip. There seems to be anatural right in one who has slain a man to step into his vacant place inall respects; and from the beginning of man's dealings with man this righthas been practically recognized, whether among warriors or robbers, asparamount to every other. Yet Septimius could not feel easy in availinghimself of this right. He therefore resolved to keep the watch, and eventhe sword and fusil, --which were less questionable spoils of war, --onlytill he should be able to restore them to some representative of the youngofficer. The contents of the purse, in accordance with the request of thedying youth, he would expend in relieving the necessities of those whomthe war (now broken out, and of which no one could see the limit) mightput in need of it. The miniature, with its broken and shattered face, thathad so vainly interposed itself between its wearer and death, had beensent to its address. 

But as to the mysterious document, the written paper, that he had laidaside without unfolding it, but with a care that betokened more interestin it than in either gold or weapon, or even in the golden representativeof that earthly time on which he set so high a value. There was somethingtremulous in his touch of it; it seemed as if he were afraid of it by themode in which he hid it away, and secured himself from it, as it were. 

This done, the air of the room, the low-ceilinged eastern room where hestudied and thought, became too close for him, and he hastened out; for hewas full of the unshaped sense of all that had befallen, and theperception of the great public event of a broken-out war was intermixedwith that of what he had done personally in the great struggle that wasbeginning. He longed, too, to know what was the news of the battle thathad gone rolling onward along the hitherto peaceful country road, converting everywhere (this demon of war, we mean), with one blast of itsred sulphurous breath, the peaceful husbandman to a soldier thirsting forblood. He turned his steps, therefore, towards the village, thinking itprobable that news must have arrived either of defeat or victory, frommessengers or fliers, to cheer or sadden the old men, the women, and thechildren, who alone perhaps remained there. 

But Septimius did not get to the village. As he passed along by the cottagethat has been already described, Rose Garfield was standing at the door, peering anxiously forth to know what was the issue of the conflict, --as ithas been woman's fate to do from the beginning of the world, and is sostill. Seeing Septimius, she forgot the restraint that she had hithertokept herself under, and, flying at him like a bird, she cried out, "Septimius, dear Septimius, where have you been? What news do you bring?You look as if you had seen some strange and dreadful thing. "

"Ah, is it so? Does my face tell such stories?" exclaimed the young man. "Idid not mean it should. Yes, Rose, I have seen and done such things aschange a man in a moment. "

"Then you have been in this terrible fight, " said Rose. 

"Yes, Rose, I have had my part in it, " answered Septimius. 

He was on the point of relieving his overburdened mind by telling her whathad happened no farther off than on the hill above them; but, seeing herexcitement, and recollecting her own momentary interview with the youngofficer, and the forced intimacy and link that had been establishedbetween them by the kiss, he feared to agitate her further by telling herthat that gay and beautiful young man had since been slain, and depositedin a bloody grave by his hands. And yet the recollection of that kisscaused a thrill of vengeful joy at the thought that the perpetrator hadsince expiated his offence with his life, and that it was himself that didit, so deeply was Septimius's Indian nature of revenge and bloodincorporated with that of more peaceful forefathers, although Septimiushad grace enough to chide down that bloody spirit, feeling that it madehim, not a patriot, but a murderer. 

"Ah, " said Rose, shuddering, "it is awful when we must kill one another!And who knows where it will end?"

"With me it will end here, Rose, " said Septimius. "It may be lawful for anyman, even if he have devoted himself to God, or however peaceful hispursuits, to fight to the death when the enemy's step is on the soil ofhis home; but only for that perilous juncture, which passed, he shouldreturn to his own way of peace. I have done a terrible thing for once, dear Rose, one that might well trace a dark line through all my futurelife; but henceforth I cannot think it my duty to pursue any further awork for which my studies and my nature unfit me. "

"Oh no! Oh no!" said Rose; "never! and you a minister, or soon to be one. There must be some peacemakers left in the world, or everything will turnto blood and confusion; for even women grow dreadfully fierce in thesetimes. My old grandmother laments her bedriddenness, because, she says, she cannot go to cheer on the people against the enemy. But she remembersthe old times of the Indian wars, when the women were as much in danger ofdeath as the men, and so were almost as fierce as they, and killed mensometimes with their own hands. But women, nowadays, ought to be gentler;let the men be fierce, if they must, except you, and such as you, Septimius. "

"Ah, dear Rose, " said Septimius, "I have not the kind and sweet impulsesthat you speak of. I need something to soften and warm my cold, hard life;something to make me feel how dreadful this time of warfare is. I needyou, dear Rose, who are all kindness of heart and mercy. "

And here Septimius, hurried away by I know not what excitement of thetime, --the disturbed state of the country, his own ebullition of passion, the deed he had done, the desire to press one human being close to hislife, because he had shed the blood of another, his half-formed purposes, his shapeless impulses; in short, being affected by the whole stir of hisnature, --spoke to Rose of love, and with an energy that, indeed, there wasno resisting when once it broke bounds. And Rose, whose maiden thoughts, to say the truth, had long dwelt upon this young man, --admiring him for acertain dark beauty, knowing him familiarly from childhood, and yet havingthe sense, that is so bewitching, of remoteness, intermixed with intimacy, because he was so unlike herself; having a woman's respect forscholarship, her imagination the more impressed by all in him that shecould not comprehend, --Rose yielded to his impetuous suit, and gave himthe troth that he requested. And yet it was with a sort of reluctance anddrawing back; her whole nature, her secretest heart, her deepestwomanhood, perhaps, did not consent. There was something in Septimius, inhis wild, mixed nature, the monstrousness that had grown out of his hybridrace, the black infusions, too, which melancholic men had left there, thedevilishness that had been symbolized in the popular regard about hisfamily, that made her shiver, even while she came the closer to him forthat very dread. And when he gave her the kiss of betrothment her lipsgrew white. If it had not been in the day of turmoil, if he had asked herin any quiet time, when Rose's heart was in its natural mood, it may wellbe that, with tears and pity for him, and half-pity for herself, Rosewould have told Septimius that she did not think she could love him wellenough to be his wife. 

And how was it with Septimius? Well; there was a singular correspondence inhis feelings to those of Rose Garfield. At first, carried away by apassion that seized him all unawares, and seemed to develop itself all ina moment, he felt, and so spoke to Rose, so pleaded his suit, as if hiswhole earthly happiness depended on her consent to be his bride. It seemedto him that her love would be the sunshine in the gloomy dungeon of hislife. But when her bashful, downcast, tremulous consent was given, thenimmediately came a strange misgiving into his mind. He felt as if he hadtaken to himself something good and beautiful doubtless in itself, butwhich might be the exchange for one more suited to him, that he must nowgive up. The intellect, which was the prominent point in Septimius, stirred and heaved, crying out vaguely that its own claims, perhaps, wereignored in this contract. Septimius had perhaps no right to love at all;if he did, it should have been a woman of another make, who could be hisintellectual companion and helper. And then, perchance, --perchance, --therewas destined for him some high, lonely path, in which, to make anyprogress, to come to any end, he must walk unburdened by the affections. Such thoughts as these depressed and chilled (as many men have found them, or similar ones, to do) the moment of success that should have been themost exulting in the world. And so, in the kiss which these two lovers hadexchanged there was, after all, something that repelled; and when theyparted they wondered at their strange states of mind, but would notacknowledge that they had done a thing that ought not to have been done. Nothing is surer, however, than that, if we suffer ourselves to be drawninto too close proximity with people, if we over-estimate the degree ofour proper tendency towards them, or theirs towards us, a reaction is sureto follow. 

 * * * * *

Septimius quitted Rose, and resumed his walk towards the village. But nowit was near sunset, and there began to be straggling passengers along theroad, some of whom came slowly, as if they had received hurts; all seemedwearied. Among them one form appeared which Rose soon found that sherecognized. It was Robert Hagburn, with a shattered firelock in his hand, broken at the butt, and his left arm bound with a fragment of his shirt, and suspended in a handkerchief; and he walked weariedly, but brightenedup at sight of Rose, as if ashamed to let her see how exhausted anddispirited he was. Perhaps he expected a smile, at least a more earnestreception than he met; for Rose, with the restraint of what had recentlypassed drawing her back, merely went gravely a few steps to meet him, andsaid, "Robert, how tired and pale you look! Are you hurt?"

"It is of no consequence, " replied Robert Hagburn; "a scratch on my leftarm from an officer's sword, with whose head my gunstock made instantacquaintance. It is no matter, Rose; you do not care for it, nor do Ieither. "

"How can you say so, Robert?" she replied. But without more greeting hepassed her, and went into his own house, where, flinging himself into achair, he remained in that despondency that men generally feel after afight, even if a successful one. 

Septimius, the next day, lost no time in writing a letter to the directiongiven him by the young officer, conveying a brief account of the latter'sdeath and burial, and a signification that he held in readiness to give upcertain articles of property, at any future time, to his representatives, mentioning also the amount of money contained in the purse, and hisintention, in compliance with the verbal will of the deceased, to expendit in alleviating the wants of prisoners. Having so done, he went up onthe hill to look at the grave, and satisfy himself that the scene therehad not been a dream; a point which he was inclined to question, in spiteof the tangible evidence of the sword and watch, which still hung over themantel-piece. There was the little mound, however, looking soincontrovertibly a grave, that it seemed to him as if all the world mustsee it, and wonder at the fact of its being there, and spend their wits inconjecturing who slept within; and, indeed, it seemed to give the affair aquestionable character, this secret burial, and he wondered and wonderedwhy the young man had been so earnest about it. Well; there was the grave;and, moreover, on the leafy earth, where the dying youth had lain, therewere traces of blood, which no rain had yet washed away. Septimiuswondered at the easiness with which he acquiesced in this deed; in fact, he felt in a slight degree the effects of that taste of blood, which makesthe slaying of men, like any other abuse, sometimes become a passion. Perhaps it was his Indian trait stirring in him again; at any rate, it isnot delightful to observe how readily man becomes a blood-sheddinganimal. 

Looking down from the hill-top, he saw the little dwelling of RoseGarfield, and caught a glimpse of the girl herself, passing the windows orthe door, about her household duties, and listened to hear the singingwhich usually broke out of her. But Rose, for some reason or other, didnot warble as usual this morning. She trod about silently, and somehow orother she was translated out of the ideality in which Septimius usuallyenveloped her, and looked little more than a New England girl, very prettyindeed, but not enough so perhaps to engross a man's life and higherpurposes into her own narrow circle; so, at least, Septimius thought. Looking a little farther, --down into the green recess where stood RobertHagburn's house, --he saw that young man, looking very pale, with his armin a sling sitting listlessly on a half-chopped log of wood which was notlikely soon to be severed by Robert's axe. Like other lovers, Septimiushad not failed to be aware that Robert Hagburn was sensible to RoseGarfield's attractions; and now, as he looked down on them both from hiselevated position, he wondered if it would not have been better for Rose'shappiness if her thoughts and virgin fancies had settled on that frank, cheerful, able, wholesome young man, instead of on himself, who met her onso few points; and, in relation to whom, there was perhaps a plant thathad its root in the grave, that would entwine itself around his wholelife, overshadowing it with dark, rich foliage and fruit that he alonecould feast upon. 

For the sombre imagination of Septimius, though he kept it as much aspossible away from the subject, still kept hinting and whispering, stillcoming back to the point, still secretly suggesting that the event ofyesterday was to have momentous consequences upon his fate. 

He had not yet looked at the paper which the young man bequeathed to him;he had laid it away unopened; not that he felt little interest in it, but, on the contrary, because he looked for some blaze of light which had beenreserved for him alone. The young officer had been only the bearer of itto him, and he had come hither to die by his hand, because that was thereadiest way by which he could deliver his message. How else, in theinfinite chances of human affairs, could the document have found its wayto its destined possessor? Thus mused Septimius, pacing to and fro on thelevel edge of his hill-top, apart from the world, looking downoccasionally into it, and seeing its love and interest away from him;while Rose, it might be looking upward, saw occasionally his passingfigure, and trembled at the nearness and remoteness that existed betweenthem; and Robert Hagburn looked too, and wondered what manner of man itwas who, having won Rose Garfield (for his instinct told him this was so), could keep that distance between her and him, thinking remote thoughts. 

Yes; there was Septimius treading a path of his own on the hill-top; hisfeet began only that morning to wear it in his walking to and fro, sheltered from the lower world, except in occasional glimpses, by thebirches and locusts that threw up their foliage from the hill-side. Butmany a year thereafter he continued to tread that path, till it was worndeep with his footsteps and trodden down hard; and it was believed by someof his superstitious neighbors that the grass and little shrubs shrankaway from his path, and made it wider on that account; because there wassomething in the broodings that urged him to and fro along the path aliento nature and its productions. There was another opinion, too, that aninvisible fiend, one of his relatives by blood, walked side by side withhim, and so made the pathway wider than his single footsteps could havemade it. But all this was idle, and was, indeed, only the foolish babblethat hovers like a mist about men who withdraw themselves from the throng, and involve themselves in unintelligible pursuits and interests of theirown. For the present, the small world, which alone knew of him, consideredSeptimius as a studious young man, who was fitting for the ministry, andwas likely enough to do credit to the ministerial blood that he drew fromhis ancestors, in spite of the wild stream that the Indian priest hadcontributed; and perhaps none the worse, as a clergyman, for having aninstinctive sense of the nature of the Devil from his traditionary claimsto partake of his blood. But what strange interest there is in tracing outthe first steps by which we enter on a career that influences our life;and this deep-worn pathway on the hill-top, passing and repassing by agrave, seemed to symbolize it in Septimius's case. 

I suppose the morbidness of Septimius's disposition was excited by thecircumstances which had put the paper into his possession. Had he receivedit by post, it might not have impressed him; he might possibly have lookedover it with ridicule, and tossed it aside. But he had taken it from adying man, and he felt that his fate was in it; and truly it turned out tobe so. He waited for a fit opportunity to open it and read it; he put itoff as if he cared nothing about it; perhaps it was because he cared somuch. Whenever he had a happy time with Rose (and, moody as Septimius was, such happy moments came), he felt that then was not the time to look intothe paper, --it was not to be read in a happy mood. 

Once he asked Rose to walk with him on the hilltop. 

"Why, what a path you have worn here, Septimius!" said the girl. "You walkmiles and miles on this one spot, and get no farther on than when youstarted. That is strange walking!"

"I don't know, Rose; I sometimes think I get a little onward. But it issweeter--yes, much sweeter, I find--to have you walking on this path herethan to be treading it alone. "

"I am glad of that, " said Rose; "for sometimes, when I look up here, andsee you through the branches, with your head bent down, and your handsclasped behind you, treading, treading, treading, always in one way, Iwonder whether I am at all in your mind. I don't think, Septimius, " addedshe, looking up in his face and smiling, "that ever a girl had just such ayoung man for a lover. "

"No young man ever had such a girl, I am sure, " said Septimius; "so sweet, so good for him, so prolific of good influences!"

"Ah, it makes me think well of myself to bring such a smile into your face!But, Septimius, what is this little hillock here so close to our path?Have you heaped it up here for a seat? Shall we sit down upon it for aninstant?--for it makes me more tired to walk backward and forward on onepath than to go straight forward a much longer distance. "

"Well; but we will not sit down on this hillock, " said Septimius, drawingher away from it. "Farther out this way, if you please, Rose, where weshall have a better view over the wide plain, the valley, and the long, tame ridge of hills on the other side, shutting it in like human life. Itis a landscape that never tires, though it has nothing striking about it;and I am glad that there are no great hills to be thrusting themselvesinto my thoughts, and crowding out better things. It might be desirable, in some states of mind, to have a glimpse of water, --to have the lake thatonce must have covered this green valley, --because water reflects the sky, and so is like religion in life, the spiritual element. "

"There is the brook running through it, though we do not see it, " repliedRose; "a torpid little brook, to be sure; but, as you say, it has heavenin its bosom, like Walden Pond, or any wider one. "

As they sat together on the hill-top, they could look down into RobertHagburn's enclosure, and they saw him, with his arm now relieved from thesling, walking about, in a very erect manner, with a middle-aged man byhis side, to whom he seemed to be talking and explaining some matter. Evenat that distance Septimius could see that the rustic stoop and uncouthnesshad somehow fallen away from Robert, and that he seemed developed. 

"What has come to Robert Hagburn?" said he. "He looks like another man thanthe lout I knew a few weeks ago. "

"Nothing, " said Rose Garfield, "except what comes to a good many young mennowadays. He has enlisted, and is going to the war. It is a pity for hismother. "

"A great pity, " said Septimius. "Mothers are greatly to be pitied all overthe country just now, and there are some even more to be pitied than themothers, though many of them do not know or suspect anything about theircause of grief at present. "

"Of whom do you speak?" asked Rose. 

"I mean those many good and sweet young girls, " said Septimius, "who wouldhave been happy wives to the thousands of young men who now, like RobertHagburn, are going to the war. Those young men--many of them atleast--will sicken and die in camp, or be shot down, or struck throughwith bayonets on battle-fields, and turn to dust and bones; while thegirls that would have loved them, and made happy firesides for them, willpine and wither, and tread along many sour and discontented years, and atlast go out of life without knowing what life is. So you see, Rose, everyshot that takes effect kills two at least, or kills one and worse thankills the other. "

"No woman will live single on account of poor Robert Hagburn being shot, "said Rose, with a change of tone; "for he would never be married were heto stay at home and plough the field. "

"How can you tell that, Rose?" asked Septimius. 

Rose did not tell how she came to know so much about Robert Hagburn'smatrimonial purposes; but after this little talk it appeared as ifsomething had risen up between them, --a sort of mist, a medium, in whichtheir intimacy was not increased; for the flow and interchange ofsentiment was balked, and they took only one or two turns in silence alongSeptimius's trodden path. I don't know exactly what it was; but there arecases in which it is inscrutably revealed to persons that they have made amistake in what is of the highest concern to them; and this truth oftencomes in the shape of a vague depression of the spirit, like a vaporsettling down on a landscape; a misgiving, coming and going perhaps, alack of perfect certainty. Whatever it was, Rose and Septimius had no moretender and playful words that day; and Rose soon went to look after hergrandmother, and Septimius went and shut himself up in his study, aftermaking an arrangement to meet Rose the next day. 

Septimius shut himself up, and drew forth the document which the youngofficer, with that singular smile on his dying face, had bequeathed to himas the reward of his death. It was in a covering of folded parchment, right through which, as aforesaid, was a bullet-hole and some stains ofblood. Septimius unrolled the parchment cover, and found inside amanuscript, closely written in a crabbed hand; so crabbed, indeed, thatSeptimius could not at first read a word of it, nor even satisfy himselfin what language it was written. There seemed to be Latin words, and someinterspersed ones in Greek characters, and here and there he coulddoubtfully read an English sentence; but, on the whole, it was anunintelligible mass, conveying somehow an idea that it was the fruit ofvast labor and erudition, emanating from a mind very full of books, andgrinding and pressing down the great accumulation of grapes that it hadgathered from so many vineyards, and squeezing out rich viscidjuices, --potent wine, --with which the reader might get drunk. Some of it, moreover, seemed, for the further mystification of the officer, to bewritten in cipher; a needless precaution, it might seem, when the writer'snatural chirography was so full of puzzle and bewilderment. 

Septimius looked at this strange manuscript, and it shook in his hands ashe held it before his eyes, so great was his excitement. Probably, doubtless, it was in a great measure owing to the way in which it came tohim, with such circumstances of tragedy and mystery; as if--so secret andso important was it--it could not be within the knowledge of two personsat once, and therefore it was necessary that one should die in the act oftransmitting it to the hand of another, the destined possessor, inheritor, profiter by it. By the bloody hand, as all the great possessions in thisworld have been gained and inherited, he had succeeded to the legacy, therichest that mortal man ever could receive. He pored over the inscrutablesentences, and wondered, when he should succeed in reading one, if itmight summon up a subject-fiend, appearing with thunder and devilishdemonstrations. And by what other strange chance had the document comeinto the hand of him who alone was fit to receive it? It seemed toSeptimius, in his enthusiastic egotism, as if the whole chain of eventshad been arranged purposely for this end; a difference had come betweentwo kindred peoples; a war had broken out; a young officer, with thetraditions of an old family represented in his line, had marched, and hadmet with a peaceful student, who had been incited from high and noblemotives to take his life; then came a strange, brief intimacy, in whichhis victim made the slayer his heir. All these chances, as they seemed, all these interferences of Providence, as they doubtless were, had beennecessary in order to put this manuscript into the hands of Septimius, whonow pored over it, and could not with certainty read one word!

But this did not trouble him, except for the momentary delay. Because hefelt well assured that the strong, concentrated study that he would bringto it would remove all difficulties, as the rays of a lens melt stones; asthe telescope pierces through densest light of stars, and resolves theminto their individual brilliancies. He could afford to spend years upon itif it were necessary; but earnestness and application should do quicklythe work of years. 

Amid these musings he was interrupted by his Aunt Keziah; though generallyobservant enough of her nephew's studies, and feeling a sanctity in them, both because of his intending to be a minister and because she had a greatreverence for learning, even if heathenish, this good old lady summonedSeptimius somewhat peremptorily to chop wood for her domestic purposes. How strange it is, --the way in which we are summoned from all highpurposes by these little homely necessities; all symbolizing the greatfact that the earthly part of us, with its demands, takes up the greaterportion of all our available force. So Septimius, grumbling and groaning, went to the woodshed and exercised himself for an hour as the old ladyrequested; and it was only by instinct that he worked, hardly consciouswhat he was doing. The whole of passing life seemed impertinent; or if, for an instant, it seemed otherwise, then his lonely speculations andplans seemed to become impalpable, and to have only the consistency ofvapor, which his utmost concentration succeeded no further than to makeinto the likeness of absurd faces, mopping, mowing, and laughing at him. 

But that sentence of mystic meaning shone out before him like atransparency, illuminated in the darkness of his mind; he determined totake it for his motto until he should be victorious in his quest. When hetook his candle, to retire apparently to bed, he again drew forth themanuscript, and, sitting down by the dim light, tried vainly to read it;but he could not as yet settle himself to concentrated and regular effort;he kept turning the leaves of the manuscript, in the hope that some otherilluminated sentence might gleam out upon him, as the first had done, andshed a light on the context around it; and that then another would bediscovered, with similar effect, until the whole document would thus beilluminated with separate stars of light, converging and concentrating inone radiance that should make the whole visible. But such was his badfortune, not another word of the manuscript was he able to read that wholeevening; and, moreover, while he had still an inch of candle left, AuntKeziah, in her nightcap, --as witch-like a figure as ever went to a wizardmeeting in the forest with Septimius's ancestor, --appeared at the door ofthe room, aroused from her bed, and shaking her finger at him. 

"Septimius, " said she, "you keep me awake, and you will ruin your eyes, andturn your head, if you study till midnight in this manner. You'll neverlive to be a minister, if this is the way you go on. "

"Well, well, Aunt Keziah, " said Septimius, covering his manuscript with abook, "I am just going to bed now. "

"Good night, then, " said the old woman; "and God bless your labors. "

Strangely enough, a glance at the manuscript, as he hid it from the oldwoman, had seemed to Septimius to reveal another sentence, of which he hadimperfectly caught the purport; and when she had gone, he in vain soughtthe place, and vainly, too, endeavored to recall the meaning of what hehad read. Doubtless his fancy exaggerated the importance of the sentence, and he felt as if it might have vanished from the book forever. In fact, the unfortunate young man, excited and tossed to and fro by a variety ofunusual impulses, was got into a bad way, and was likely enough to go mad, unless the balancing portion of his mind proved to be of greater volumeand effect than as yet appeared to be the case. 

 * * * * *

The next morning he was up, bright and early, poring over the manuscriptwith the sharpened wits of the new day, peering into its night, into itsold, blurred, forgotten dream; and, indeed, he had been dreaming about it, and was fully possessed with the idea that, in his dream, he had taken upthe inscrutable document, and read it off as glibly as he would the pageof a modern drama, in a continual rapture with the deep truth that it madeclear to his comprehension, and the lucid way in which it evolved the modein which man might be restored to his originally undying state. So strongwas the impression, that when he unfolded the manuscript, it was withalmost the belief that the crabbed old handwriting would be plain to him. Such did not prove to be the case, however; so far from it, that poorSeptimius in vain turned over the yellow pages in quest of the onesentence which he had been able, or fancied he had been able, to readyesterday. The illumination that had brought it out was now faded, and allwas a blur, an inscrutableness, a scrawl of unintelligible charactersalike. So much did this affect him, that he had almost a mind to tear itinto a thousand fragments, and scatter it out of the window to thewest-wind, that was then blowing past the house; and if, in that summerseason, there had been a fire on the hearth, it is possible that easyrealization of a destructive impulse might have incited him to fling theaccursed scrawl into the hottest of the flames, and thus returned it tothe Devil, who, he suspected, was the original author of it. Had he doneso, what strange and gloomy passages would I have been spared the pain ofrelating! How different would have been the life of Septimius, --athoughtful preacher of God's word, taking severe but conscientious viewsof man's state and relations, a heavy-browed walker and worker on earth, and, finally, a slumberer in an honored grave, with an epitaph bearingtestimony to his great usefulness in his generation. 

But, in the mean time, here was the troublesome day passing over him, andpestering, bewildering, and tripping him up with its mere sublunarytroubles, as the days will all of us the moment we try to do anything thatwe flatter ourselves is of a little more importance than others are doing. Aunt Keziah tormented him a great while about the rich field, just acrossthe road, in front of the house, which Septimius had neglected thecultivation of, unwilling to spare the time to plough, to plant, to hoe ithimself, but hired a lazy lout of the village, when he might just as wellhave employed and paid wages to the scarecrow which Aunt Keziah dressedout in ancient habiliments, and set up in the midst of the corn. Then camean old codger from the village, talking to Septimius about the war, --atheme of which he was weary: telling the rumor of skirmishes that the nextday would prove to be false, of battles that were immediately to takeplace, of encounters with the enemy in which our side showed the valor oftwenty-fold heroes, but had to retreat; babbling about shells and mortars, battalions, manoeuvres, angles, fascines, and other items of military art;for war had filled the whole brain of the people, and enveloped the wholethought of man in a mist of gunpowder. 

In this way, sitting on his doorstep, or in the very study, haunted by suchspeculations, this wretched old man would waste the better part of asummer afternoon while Septimius listened, returning abstractedmonosyllables, answering amiss, and wishing his persecutor jammed into oneof the cannons he talked about, and fired off, to end his interminablebabble in one roar; [talking] of great officers coming from France andother countries; of overwhelming forces from England, to put an end to thewar at once; of the unlikelihood that it ever should be ended; of itshopelessness; of its certainty of a good and speedy end. 

Then came limping along the lane a disabled soldier, begging his way homefrom the field, which, a little while ago, he had sought in the full vigorof rustic health he was never to know again; with whom Septimius had totalk, and relieve his wants as far as he could (though not from the pooryoung officer's deposit of English gold), and send him on his way. 

Then came the minister to talk with his former pupil, about whom he hadlatterly had much meditation, not understanding what mood had takenpossession of him; for the minister was a man of insight, and fromconversations with Septimius, as searching as he knew how to make them, hehad begun to doubt whether he were sufficiently sound in faith to adoptthe clerical persuasion. Not that he supposed him to be anything like aconfirmed unbeliever: but he thought it probable that these doubts, thesestrange, dark, disheartening suggestions of the Devil, that so surelyinfect certain temperaments and measures of intellect, were tormentingpoor Septimius, and pulling him back from the path in which he was capableof doing so much good. So he came this afternoon to talk seriously withhim, and to advise him, if the case were as he supposed, to get for a timeout of the track of the thought in which he had so long been engaged; toenter into active life; and by and by, when the morbid influences shouldhave been overcome by a change of mental and moral religion, he mightreturn, fresh and healthy, to his original design. 

"What can I do, " asked Septimius, gloomily, "what business take up, whenthe whole land lies waste and idle, except for this war?"

"There is the very business, then, " said the minister. "Do you think God'swork is not to be done in the field as well as in the pulpit? You arestrong, Septimius, of a bold character, and have a mien and bearing thatgives you a natural command among men. Go to the wars, and do a valiantpart for your country, and come back to your peaceful mission when theenemy has vanished. Or you might go as chaplain to a regiment, and useeither hand in battle, --pray for success before a battle, help win it withsword or gun, and give thanks to God, kneeling on the bloody field, at itsclose. You have already stretched one foe on your native soil. "

Septimius could not but smile within himself at this warlike and bloodycounsel; and, joining it with some similar exhortations from Aunt Keziah, he was inclined to think that women and clergymen are, in matters of war, the most uncompromising and bloodthirsty of the community. However, hereplied, coolly, that his moral impulses and his feelings of duty did notexactly impel him in this direction, and that he was of opinion that warwas a business in which a man could not engage with safety to hisconscience, unless his conscience actually drove him into it; and thatthis made all the difference between heroic battle and murderous strife. The good minister had nothing very effectual to answer to this, and tookhis leave, with a still stronger opinion than before that there wassomething amiss in his pupil's mind. 

By this time, this thwarting day had gone on through its course of littleand great impediments to his pursuit, --the discouragements of trifling andearthly business, of purely impertinent interruption, of severe anddisheartening opposition from the powerful counteraction of differentkinds of mind, --until the hour had come at which he had arranged to meetRose Garfield. I am afraid the poor thwarted youth did not go to hislove-tryst in any very amiable mood; but rather, perhaps, reflecting howall things earthly and immortal, and love among the rest, whichevercategory, of earth or heaven, it may belong to, set themselves againstman's progress in any pursuit that he seeks to devote himself to. It isone struggle, the moment he undertakes such a thing, of everything else inthe world to impede him. 

However, as it turned out, it was a pleasant and happy interview that hehad with Rose that afternoon. The girl herself was in a happy, tunefulmood, and met him with such simplicity, threw such a light of sweetnessover his soul, that Septimius almost forgot all the wild cares of the day, and walked by her side with a quiet fulness of pleasure that was new tohim. She reconciled him, in some secret way, to life as it was, toimperfection, to decay; without any help from her intellect, but throughthe influence of her character, she seemed, not to solve, but to smoothaway, problems that troubled him; merely by being, by womanhood, bysimplicity, she interpreted God's ways to him; she softened the stoninessthat was gathering about his heart. And so they had a delightful time oftalking, and laughing, and smelling to flowers; and when they wereparting, Septimius said to her, --

"Rose, you have convinced me that this is a most happy world, and that Lifehas its two children, Birth and Death, and is bound to prize them equally;and that God is very kind to his earthly children; and that all will gowell. "

"And have I convinced you of all this?" replied Rose, with a prettylaughter. "It is all true, no doubt, but I should not have known how toargue for it. But you are very sweet, and have not frightened me to-day. "

"Do I ever frighten you then, Rose?" asked Septimius, bending his blackbrow upon her with a look of surprise and displeasure. 

"Yes, sometimes, " said Rose, facing him with courage, and smiling upon thecloud so as to drive it away; "when you frown upon me like that, I am alittle afraid you will beat me, all in good time. "

"Now, " said Septimius, laughing again, "you shall have your choice, to bebeaten on the spot, or suffer another kind of punishment, --which?"

So saying, he snatched her to him, and strove to kiss her, while Rose, laughing and struggling, cried out, "The beating! the beating!" ButSeptimius relented not, though it was only Rose's cheek that he succeededin touching. In truth, except for that first one, at the moment of theirplighted troths, I doubt whether Septimius ever touched those soft, sweetlips, where the smiles dwelt and the little pouts. He now returned to hisstudy, and questioned with himself whether he should touch that weary, ugly, yellow, blurred, unintelligible, bewitched, mysterious, bullet-penetrated, blood-stained manuscript again. There was anundefinable reluctance to do so, and at the same time an enticement(irresistible, as it proved) drawing him towards it. He yielded, andtaking it from his desk, in which the precious, fatal treasure was lockedup, he plunged into it again, and this time with a certain degree ofsuccess. He found the line which had before gleamed out, and vanishedagain, and which now started out in strong relief; even as when sometimeswe see a certain arrangement of stars in the heavens, and again lose it, by not seeing its individual stars in the same relation as before; evenso, looking at the manuscript in a different way, Septimius saw thisfragment of a sentence, and saw, moreover, what was necessary to give it acertain meaning. "Set the root in a grave, and wait for what shallblossom. It will be very rich, and full of juice. " This was the purport, he now felt sure, of the sentence he had lighted upon; and he took it torefer to the mode of producing something that was essential to the thingto be concocted. It might have only a moral being; or, as is generally thecase, the moral and physical truth went hand in hand. 

While Septimius was busying himself in this way, the summer advanced, andwith it there appeared a new character, making her way into our pages. This was a slender and pale girl, whom Septimius was once startled tofind, when he ascended his hill-top, to take his walk to and fro upon theaccustomed path, which he had now worn deep. 

What was stranger, she sat down close beside the grave, which none but heand the minister knew to be a grave; that little hillock, which he hadlevelled a little, and had planted with various flowers and shrubs; whichthe summer had fostered into richness, the poor young man below havingcontributed what he could, and tried to render them as beautiful as hemight, in remembrance of his own beauty. Septimius wished to conceal thefact of its being a grave: not that he was tormented with any sense thathe had done wrong in shooting the young man, which had been done in fairbattle; but still it was not the pleasantest of thoughts, that he had laida beautiful human creature, so fit for the enjoyment of life, there, whenhis own dark brow, his own troubled breast, might better, he could not butacknowledge, have been covered up there. [_Perhaps there might sometimesbe something fantastically gay in the language and behavior of thegirl. _]

Well; but then, on this flower and shrub-disguised grave, sat this unknownform of a girl, with a slender, pallid, melancholy grace about her, simplydressed in a dark attire, which she drew loosely about her. At firstglimpse, Septimius fancied that it might be Rose; but it needed only aglance to undeceive him; her figure was of another character from thevigorous, though slight and elastic beauty of Rose; this was a droopinggrace, and when he came near enough to see her face, he saw that thoselarge, dark, melancholy eyes, with which she had looked at him, had nevermet his gaze before. 

"Good-morrow, fair maiden, " said Septimius, with such courtesy as he knewhow to use (which, to say truth, was of a rustic order, his way of lifehaving brought him little into female society). "There is a nice air hereon the hill-top, this sultry morning below the hill!"

As he spoke, he continued to look wonderingly at the strange maiden, halffancying that she might be something that had grown up out of the grave;so unexpected she was, so simply unlike anything that had before comethere. 

The girl did not speak to him, but as she sat by the grave she kept weedingout the little white blades of faded autumn grass and yellow pine-spikes, peering into the soil as if to see what it was all made of, and everythingthat was growing there; and in truth, whether by Septimius's care or no, there seemed to be several kinds of flowers, --those little asters thatabound everywhere, and golden flowers, such as autumn supplies withabundance. She seemed to be in quest of something, and several timesplucked a leaf and examined it carefully; then threw it down again, andshook her head. At last she lifted up her pale face, and, fixing her eyesquietly on Septimius, spoke: "It is not here!"

A very sweet voice it was, --plaintive, low, --and she spoke to Septimius asif she were familiar with him, and had something to do with him. He wasgreatly interested, not being able to imagine who the strange girl was, orwhence she came, or what, of all things, could be her reason for comingand sitting down by this grave, and apparently botanizing upon it, inquest of some particular plant. 

"Are you in search of flowers?" asked Septimius. "This is but a barren spotfor them, and this is not a good season. In the meadows, and along themargin of the watercourses, you might find the fringed gentian at thistime. In the woods there are several pretty flowers, --the side-saddleflower, the anemone; violets are plentiful in spring, and make the wholehill-side blue. But this hill-top, with its soil strewn over a heap ofpebble-stones, is no place for flowers. "

"The soil is fit, " said the maiden, "but the flower has not sprung up. "

"What flower do you speak of?" asked Septimius. 

"One that is not here, " said the pale girl. "No matter. I will look for itagain next spring. "

"Do you, then, dwell hereabout?" inquired Septimius. 

"Surely, " said the maiden, with a look of surprise; "where else should Idwell? My home is on this hilltop. "

It not a little startled Septimius, as may be supposed, to find hispaternal inheritance, of which he and his forefathers had been the onlyowners since the world began (for they held it by an Indian deed), claimedas a home and abiding-place by this fair, pale, strange-acting maiden, whospoke as if she had as much right there as if she had grown up out of thesoil like one of the wild, indigenous flowers which she had been gazing atand handling. However that might be, the maiden seemed now about todepart, rising, giving a farewell touch or two to the little verdanthillock, which looked much the neater for her ministrations. 

"Are you going?" said Septimius, looking at her in wonder. 

"For a time, " said she. 

"And shall I see you again?" asked he. 

"Surely, " said the maiden, "this is my walk, along the brow of the hill. "

It again smote Septimius with a strange thrill of surprise to find the walkwhich he himself had made, treading it, and smoothing it, and beating itdown with the pressure of his continual feet, from the time when thetufted grass made the sides all uneven, until now, when it was such apathway as you may see through a wood, or over a field, where many feetpass every day, --to find this track and exemplification of his own secretthoughts and plans and emotions, this writing of his body, impelled by thestruggle and movement of his soul, claimed as her own by a strange girlwith melancholy eyes and voice, who seemed to have such a sad familiaritywith him. 

"You are welcome to come here, " said he, endeavoring at least to keep suchhold on his own property as was implied in making a hospitable surrenderof it to another. 

"Yes, " said the girl, "a person should always be welcome to his own. "

A faint smile seemed to pass over her face as she said this, vanishing, however, immediately into the melancholy of her usual expression. She wentalong Septimius's path, while he stood gazing at her till she reached thebrow where it sloped towards Robert Hagburn's house; then she turned, andseemed to wave a slight farewell towards the young man, and began todescend. When her figure had entirely sunk behind the brow of the hill, Septimius slowly followed along the ridge, meaning to watch from thatelevated station the course she would take; although, indeed, he would nothave been surprised if he had seen nothing, no trace of her in the wholenearness or distance; in short, if she had been a freak, an illusion, of ahard-working mind that had put itself ajar by deeply brooding on abstrusematters, an illusion of eyes that he had tried too much by poring over theinscrutable manuscript, and of intellect that was mystified and bewilderedby trying to grasp things that could not be grasped. A thing ofwitchcraft, a sort of fungus-growth out of the grave, an unsubstantialityaltogether; although, certainly, she had weeded the grave with bodilyfingers, at all events. Still he had so much of the hereditary mysticismof his race in him, that he might have held her supernatural, only that onreaching the brow of the hill he saw her feet approach the dwelling ofRobert Hagburn's mother, who, moreover, appeared at the thresholdbeckoning her to come, with a motherly, hospitable air, that denoted sheknew the strange girl, and recognized her as human. 

It did not lessen Septimius's surprise, however, to think that such asingular being was established in the neighborhood without his knowledge;considered as a real occurrence of this world, it seemed even moreunaccountable than if it had been a thing of ghostology and witchcraft. Continually through the day the incident kept introducing its recollectionamong his thoughts and studies; continually, as he paced along his path, this form seemed to hurry along by his side on the track that she hadclaimed for her own, and he thought of her singular threat or promise, whichever it were to be held, that he should have a companion there infuture. In the decline of the day, when he met the schoolmistress cominghome from her little seminary, he snatched the first opportunity tomention the apparition of the morning, and ask Rose if she knew anythingof her. 

"Very little, " said Rose, "but she is flesh and blood, of that you may bequite sure. She is a girl who has been shut up in Boston by the siege;perhaps a daughter of one of the British officers, and her health beingfrail, she requires better air than they have there, and so permission wasgot for her, from General Washington, to come and live in the country; asany one may see, our liberties have nothing to fear from this poorbrain-stricken girl. And Robert Hagburn, having to bring a message fromcamp to the selectmen here, had it in charge to bring the girl, whom hismother has taken to board. "

"Then the poor thing is crazy?" asked Septimius. 

"A little brain-touched, that is all, " replied Rose, "owing to some griefthat she has had; but she is quite harmless, Robert was told to say, andneeds little or no watching, and will get a kind of fantastic happinessfor herself, if only she is allowed to ramble about at her pleasure. Ifthwarted, she might be very wild and miserable. "

"Have you spoken with her?" asked Septimius. 

"A word or two this morning, as I was going to my school, " said Rose. "Shetook me by the hand, and smiled, and said we would be friends, and that Ishould show her where the flowers grew; for that she had a little spot ofher own that she wanted to plant with them. And she asked me if the_Sanguinea sanguinissima_ grew hereabout. I should not have taken herto be ailing in her wits, only for a kind of free-spokenness andfamiliarity, as if we had been acquainted a long while; or as if she hadlived in some country where there are no forms and impediments in people'sgetting acquainted. "

"Did you like her?" inquired Septimius. 

"Yes; almost loved her at first sight, " answered Rose, "and I hope may doher some little good, poor thing, being of her own age, and the onlycompanion, hereabouts, whom she is likely to find. But she has been welleducated, and is a lady, that is easy to see. "

"It is very strange, " said Septimius, "but I fear I shall be a good dealinterrupted in my thoughts and studies, if she insists on haunting myhill-top as much as she tells me. My meditations are perhaps of a littletoo much importance to be shoved aside for the sake of gratifying a crazygirl's fantasies. "

"Ah, that is a hard thing to say!" exclaimed Rose, shocked at her lover'scold egotism, though not giving it that title. "Let the poor thing glidequietly along in the path, though it be yours. Perhaps, after a while, shewill help your thoughts. "

"My thoughts, " said Septimius, "are of a kind that can have no help fromany one; if from any, it would only be from some wise, long-studied, andexperienced scientific man, who could enlighten me as to the bases andfoundation of things, as to mystic writings, as to chemical elements, asto the mysteries of language, as to the principles and system on which wewere created. Methinks these are not to be taught me by a girl touched inthe wits. "

"I fear, " replied Rose Garfield with gravity, and drawing imperceptiblyapart from him, "that no woman can help you much. You despise woman'sthought, and have no need of her affection. "

Septimius said something soft and sweet, and in a measure true, in regardto the necessity he felt for the affection and sympathy of one woman atleast--the one now by his side--to keep his life warm and to make theempty chambers of his heart comfortable. But even while he spoke, therewas something that dragged upon his tongue; for he felt that the solitarypursuit in which he was engaged carried him apart from the sympathy ofwhich he spoke, and that he was concentrating his efforts and interestentirely upon himself, and that the more he succeeded the more remotely heshould be carried away, and that his final triumph would be the completeseclusion of himself from all that breathed, --the converting him, from aninterested actor into a cold and disconnected spectator of all mankind'swarm and sympathetic life. So, as it turned out, this interview with Rosewas one of those in which, coming no one knows from whence, a namelesscloud springs up between two lovers, and keeps them apart from one anotherby a cold, sullen spell. Usually, however, it requires only one word, spoken out of the heart, to break that spell, and compel the invisible, unsympathetic medium which the enemy of love has stretched cunninglybetween them, to vanish, and let them come closer together than ever; but, in this case, it might be that the love was the illusive state, and theestrangement the real truth, the disenchanted verity. At all events, whenthe feeling passed away, in Rose's heart there was no reaction, no warmerlove, as is generally the case. As for Septimius, he had other things tothink about, and when he next met Rose Garfield, had forgotten that he hadbeen sensible of a little wounded feeling, on her part, at parting. 

By dint of continued poring over the manuscript, Septimius now began tocomprehend that it was written in a singular mixture of Latin and ancientEnglish, with constantly recurring paragraphs of what he was convinced wasa mystic writing; and these recurring passages of completeunintelligibility seemed to be necessary to the proper understanding ofany part of the document. What was discoverable was quaint, curious, butthwarting and perplexing, because it seemed to imply some very greatpurpose, only to be brought out by what was hidden. 

Septimius had read, in the old college library during his pupilage, a workon ciphers and cryptic writing, but being drawn to it only by hiscuriosity respecting whatever was hidden, and not expecting ever to usehis knowledge, he had obtained only the barest idea of what was necessaryto the deciphering a secret passage. Judging by what he could pick out, hewould have thought the whole essay was upon the moral conduct; all partsof that he could make out seeming to refer to a certain ascetic rule oflife; to denial of pleasures; these topics being repeated and insisted oneverywhere, although without any discoverable reference to religious ormoral motives; and always when the author seemed verging towards adefinite purpose, he took refuge in his cipher. Yet withal, imperfectly(or not at all, rather) as Septimius could comprehend its purport, thisstrange writing had a mystic influence, that wrought upon his imagination, and with the late singular incidents of his life, his continual thought onthis one subject, his walk on the hill-top, lonely, or only interrupted bythe pale shadow of a girl, combined to set him outside of the livingworld. Rose Garfield perceived it, knew and felt that he was gliding awayfrom her, and met him with a reserve which she could not overcome. 

It was a pity that his early friend, Robert Hagburn, could not at presenthave any influence over him, having now regularly joined the ContinentalArmy, and being engaged in the expedition of Arnold against Quebec. Indeed, this war, in which the country was so earnestly andenthusiastically engaged, had perhaps an influence on Septimius's state ofmind, for it put everybody into an exaggerated and unnatural state, unitedenthusiasms of all sorts, heightened everybody either into its own heroismor into the peculiar madness to which each person was inclined; andSeptimius walked so much the more wildly on his lonely course, because thepeople were going enthusiastically on another. In times of revolution andpublic disturbance all absurdities are more unrestrained; the measure ofcalm sense, the habits, the orderly decency, are partially lost. Morepeople become insane, I should suppose; offences against public morality, female license, are more numerous; suicides, murders, all ungovernableoutbreaks of men's thoughts, embodying themselves in wild acts, take placemore frequently, and with less horror to the lookers-on. So [with]Septimius; there was not, as there would have been at an ordinary time, the same calmness and truth in the public observation, scrutinizingeverything with its keen criticism, in that time of seething opinions andoverturned principles; a new time was coming, and Septimius's phase ofnovelty attracted less attention so far as it was known. 

So he continued to brood over the manuscript in his study, and to hide itunder lock and key in a recess of the wall, as if it were a secret ofmurder; to walk, too, on his hill-top, where at sunset always came thepale, crazy maiden, who still seemed to watch the little hillock with apertinacious care that was strange to Septimius. By and by came the winterand the deep snows; and even then, unwilling to give up his habitual placeof exercise, the monotonousness of which promoted his wish to keep beforehis mind one subject of thought, Septimius wore a path through the snow, and still walked there. Here, however, he lost for a time thecompanionship of the girl; for when the first snow came, she shivered, andlooked at its white heap over the hillock, and said to Septimius, "I willlook for it again in spring. "

[_Septimius is at the point of despair for want of a guide in hisstudies_. ]

The winter swept over, and spring was just beginning to spread its greenflush over the more favored exposures of the landscape, although on thenorth side of stone-walls, and the northern nooks of hills, there werestill the remnants of snow-drifts. Septimius's hill-top, which was of asoil which quickly rid itself of moisture, now began to be a genial placeof resort to him, and he was one morning taking his walk there, meditatingupon the still insurmountable difficulties which interposed themselvesagainst the interpretation of the manuscript, yet feeling the new gush ofspring bring hope to him, and the energy and elasticity for new effort. Thus pacing to and fro, he was surprised, as he turned at the extremity ofhis walk, to see a figure advancing towards him; not that of the palemaiden whom he was accustomed to see there, but a figure as widelydifferent as possible. [_He sees a spider dangling from his web, andexamines him minutely_. ] It was that of a short, broad, somewhatelderly man, dressed in a surtout that had a half-military air; the cockedhat of the period, well worn, and having a fresher spot in it, whence, perhaps, a cockade had been recently taken off; and this personage carrieda well blackened German pipe in his hand, which, as he walked, he appliedto his lips, and puffed out volumes of smoke, filling the pleasant westernbreeze with the fragrance of some excellent Virginia. He came slowlyalong, and Septimius, slackening his pace a little, came as slowly to meethim, feeling somewhat indignant, to be sure, that anybody should intrudeon his sacred hill; until at last they met, as it happened, close by thememorable little hillock, on which the grass and flower-leaves also hadbegun to sprout. The stranger looked keenly at Septimius, made a carelesssalute by putting his hand up, and took the pipe from his mouth. 

"Mr. Septimius Felton, I suppose?" said he. 

"That is my name, " replied Septimius. 

"I am Doctor Jabez Portsoaken, " said the stranger, "late surgeon of hisMajesty's sixteenth regiment, which I quitted when his Majesty's armyquitted Boston, being desirous of trying my fortunes in your country, andgiving the people the benefit of my scientific knowledge; also to practisesome new modes of medical science, which I could not so well do in thearmy. "

"I think you are quite right, Doctor Jabez Portsoaken, " said Septimius, alittle confused and bewildered, so unused had he become to the society ofstrangers. 

"And as to you, sir, " said the doctor, who had a very rough, abrupt way ofspeaking, "I have to thank you for a favor done me. "

"Have you, sir?" said Septimius, who was quite sure that he had never seenthe doctor's uncouth figure before. 

"Oh, ay, me, " said the doctor, puffing coolly, --"me in the person of myniece, a sickly, poor, nervous little thing, who is very fond of walkingon your hill-top, and whom you do not send away. "

"You are the uncle of Sibyl Dacy?" said Septimius. 

"Even so, her mother's brother, " said the doctor, with a grotesque bow. "So, being on a visit, the first that the siege allowed me to pay, to seehow the girl was getting on, I take the opportunity to pay my respects toyou; the more that I understand you to be a young man of some learning, and it is not often that one meets with such in this country. "

"No, " said Septimius, abruptly, for indeed he had half a suspicion thatthis queer Doctor Portsoaken was not altogether sincere, --that, in short, he was making game of him. "You have been misinformed. I know nothingwhatever that is worth knowing. "

"Oho!" said the doctor, with a long puff of smoke out of his pipe. "If youare convinced of that, you are one of the wisest men I have met with, young as you are. I must have been twice your age before I got so far; andeven now, I am sometimes fool enough to doubt the only thing I was eversure of knowing. But come, you make me only the more earnest to colloguewith you. If we put both our shortcomings together, they may make up anitem of positive knowledge. "

"What use can one make of abortive thoughts?" said Septimius. 

"Do your speculations take a scientific turn?" said Doctor Portsoaken. "There I can meet you with as much false knowledge and empiricism as youcan bring for the life of you. Have you ever tried to studyspiders?--there is my strong point now! I have hung my whole interest inlife on a spider's web. "

"I know nothing of them, sir, " said Septimius, "except to crush them when Isee them running across the floor, or to brush away the festoons of theirwebs when they have chanced to escape my Aunt Keziah's broom. "

"Crush them! Brush away their webs!" cried the doctor, apparently in arage, and shaking his pipe at Septimius. "Sir, it is sacrilege! Yes, it isworse than murder. Every thread of a spider's web is worth more than athread of gold; and before twenty years are passed, a housemaid will bebeaten to death with her own broomstick if she disturbs one of thesesacred animals. But, come again. Shall we talk of botany, the virtues ofherbs?"

"My Aunt Keziah should meet you there, doctor, " said Septimius. "She has anative and original acquaintance with their virtues, and can save and killwith any of the faculty. As for myself, my studies have not turned thatway. "

"They ought! they ought!" said the doctor, looking meaningly at him. "Thewhole thing lies in the blossom of an herb. Now, you ought to begin withwhat lies about you; on this little hillock, for instance;" and looking atthe grave beside which they were standing, he gave it a kick which went toSeptimius's heart, there seemed to be such a spite and scorn in it. "Onthis hillock I see some specimens of plants which would be worth yourlooking at. "

Bending down towards the grave as he spoke, he seemed to give closerattention to what he saw there; keeping in his stooping position till hisface began to get a purple aspect, for the erudite doctor was of that makeof man who has to be kept right side uppermost with care. At length heraised himself, muttering, "Very curious! very curious!"

"Do you see anything remarkable there?" asked Septimius, with someinterest. 

"Yes, " said the doctor, bluntly. "No matter what! The time will come whenyou may like to know it. "

"Will you come with me to my residence at the foot of the hill, DoctorPortsoaken?" asked Septimius. "I am not a learned man, and have little orno title to converse with one, except a sincere desire to be wiser than Iam. If you can be moved on such terms to give me your companionship, Ishall be thankful. "

"Sir, I am with you, " said Doctor Portsoaken. "I will tell you what I know, in the sure belief (for I will be frank with you) that it will add to theamount of dangerous folly now in your mind, and help you on the way toruin. Take your choice, therefore, whether to know me further or not. "

"I neither shrink nor fear, --neither hope much, " said Septimius, quietly. "Anything that you can communicate--if anything you can--I shallfearlessly receive, and return you such thanks as it may be found todeserve. "

So saying, he led the way down the hill, by the steep path that descendedabruptly upon the rear of his bare and unadorned little dwelling; thedoctor following with much foul language (for he had a terrible habit ofswearing) at the difficulties of the way, to which his short legs were illadapted. Aunt Keziah met them at the door, and looked sharply at thedoctor, who returned the gaze with at least as much keenness, mutteringbetween his teeth, as he did so; and to say the truth, Aunt Keziah was asworthy of being sworn at as any woman could well be, for whatever shemight have been in her younger days, she was at this time as strange amixture of an Indian squaw and herb doctress, with the crabbed old maid, and a mingling of the witch-aspect running through all as could well beimagined; and she had a handkerchief over her head, and she was of hue adusky yellow, and she looked very cross. As Septimius ushered the doctorinto his study, and was about to follow him, Aunt Keziah drew him back. 

"Septimius, who is this you have brought here?" asked she. 

"A man I have met on the hill, " answered her nephew; "a Doctor Portsoakenhe calls himself, from the old country. He says he has knowledge of herbsand other mysteries; in your own line, it may be. If you want to talk withhim, give the man his dinner, and find out what there is in him. "

"And what do you want of him yourself, Septimius?" asked she. 

"I? Nothing!--that is to say, I expect nothing, " said Septimius. "But I amastray, seeking everywhere, and so I reject no hint, no promise, nofaintest possibility of aid that I may find anywhere. I judge this man tobe a quack, but I judge the same of the most learned man of hisprofession, or any other; and there is a roughness about this man that mayindicate a little more knowledge than if he were smoother. So, as he threwhimself in my way, I take him in. "

"A grim, ugly-looking old wretch as ever I saw, " muttered Aunt Keziah. "Well, he shall have his dinner; and if he likes to talk aboutyarb-dishes, I'm with him. "

So Septimius followed the doctor into his study, where he found him withthe sword in his hand, which he had taken from over the mantel-piece, andwas holding it drawn, examining the hilt and blade with great minuteness;the hilt being wrought in openwork, with certain heraldic devices, doubtless belonging to the family of its former wearer. 

"I have seen this weapon before, " said the doctor. 

"It may well be, " said Septimius. "It was once worn by a person who servedin the army of your king. "

"And you took it from him?" said the doctor. 

"If I did, it was in no way that I need be ashamed of, or afraid to tell, though I choose rather not to speak of it, " answered Septimius. 

"Have you, then, no desire nor interest to know the family, the personalhistory, the prospects, of him who once wore this sword, and who willnever draw sword again?" inquired Doctor Portsoaken. "Poor Cyril Norton!There was a singular story attached to that young man, sir, and a singularmystery he carried about with him, the end of which, perhaps, is notyet. "

Septimius would have been, indeed, well enough pleased to learn the mysterywhich he himself had seen that there was about the man whom he slew; buthe was afraid that some question might be thereby started about the secretdocument that he had kept possession of; and he therefore would havewished to avoid the whole subject. 

"I cannot be supposed to take much interest in English family history. Itis a hundred and fifty years, at least, since my own family ceased to beEnglish, " he answered. "I care more for the present and future than forthe past. "

"It is all one, " said the doctor, sitting down, taking out a pinch oftobacco and refilling his pipe. 

It is unnecessary to follow up the description of the visit of theeccentric doctor through the day. Suffice it to say that there was a sortof charm, or rather fascination, about the uncouth old fellow, in spite ofhis strange ways; in spite of his constant puffing of tobacco; and inspite, too, of a constant imbibing of strong liquor, which he madeinquiries for, and of which the best that could be produced was a certaindecoction, infusion, or distillation, pertaining to Aunt Keziah, and ofwhich the basis was rum, be it said, done up with certain bitter herbs ofthe old lady's own gathering, at proper times of the moon, and which was awell-known drink to all who were favored with Aunt Keziah's friendship;though there was a story that it was the very drink which used to bepassed round at witch-meetings, being brewed from the Devil's own recipe. And, in truth, judging from the taste (for I once took a sip of a draughtprepared from the same ingredients, and in the same way), I should thinkthis hellish origin might be the veritable one. 

[_"I thought" quoth the doctor, "I could drink anything, but"_--]

But the valiant doctor sipped, and sipped again, and said with greatblasphemy that it was the real stuff, and only needed henbane to make itperfect. Then, taking from his pocket a good-sized leathern-covered flask, with a silver lip fastened on the muzzle, he offered it to Septimius, whodeclined, and to Aunt Keziah, who preferred her own decoction, and thendrank it off himself, with a loud smack of satisfaction, declaring it tobe infernally good brandy. 

Well, after this Septimius and he talked; and I know not how it was, butthere was a great deal of imagination in this queer man, whether a bodilyor spiritual influence it might be hard to say. On the other handSeptimius had for a long while held little intercourse with men; nonewhatever with men who could comprehend him; the doctor, too, seemed tobring the discourse singularly in apposition with what his host wascontinually thinking about, for he conversed on occult matters, on peoplewho had had the art of living long, and had only died at last by accident, on the powers and qualities of common herbs, which he believed to be sogreat, that all around our feet--growing in the wild forest, afar fromman, or following the footsteps of man wherever he fixes his residence, across seas, from the old homesteads whence he migrated, following himeverywhere, and offering themselves sedulously and continually to hisnotice, while he only plucks them away from the comparatively worthlessthings which he cultivates, and flings them aside, blaspheming at thembecause Providence has sown them so thickly--grow what we call weeds, onlybecause all the generations, from the beginning of time till now, havefailed to discover their wondrous virtues, potent for the curing of alldiseases, potent for procuring length of days. 

"Everything good, " said the doctor, drinking another dram of brandy, "liesright at our feet, and all we need is to gather it up. "

"That's true, " quoth Keziah, taking just a little sup of her hellishpreparation; "these herbs were all gathered within a hundred yards of thisvery spot, though it took a wise woman to find out their virtues. "

The old woman went off about her household duties, and then it was thatSeptimius submitted to the doctor the list of herbs which he had pickedout of the old document, asking him, as something apposite to the subjectof their discourse, whether he was acquainted with them, for most of themhad very queer names, some in Latin, some in English. 

The bluff doctor put on his spectacles, and looked over the slip of yellowand worn paper scrutinizingly, puffing tobacco-smoke upon it in greatvolumes, as if thereby to make its hidden purport come out; he mumbled tohimself, he took another sip from his flask; and then, putting it down onthe table, appeared to meditate. 

"This infernal old document, " said he, at length, "is one that I have neverseen before, yet heard of, nevertheless; for it was my folly in youth (andwhether I am any wiser now is more than I take upon me to say, but it wasmy folly then) to be in quest of certain kinds of secret knowledge, whichthe fathers of science thought attainable. Now, in several quarters, amongst people with whom my pursuits brought me in contact, I heard of acertain recipe which had been lost for a generation or two, but which, ifit could be recovered, would prove to have the true life-giving potency init. It is said that the ancestor of a great old family in England was inpossession of this secret, being a man of science, and the friend of FriarBacon, who was said to have concocted it himself, partly from the preceptsof his master, partly from his own experiments, and it is thought he mighthave been living to this day, if he had not unluckily been killed in theWars of the Roses; for you know no recipe for long life would be proofagainst an old English arrow, or a leaden bullet from one of our ownfirelocks. "

"And what has been the history of the thing after his death?" askedSeptimius. 

"It was supposed to be preserved in the family, " said the doctor, "and ithas always been said, that the head and eldest son of that family had itat his option to live forever, if he could only make up his mind to it. But seemingly there were difficulties in the way. There was probably acertain diet and regimen to be observed, certain strict rules of life tobe kept, a certain asceticism to be imposed on the person, which was notquite agreeable to young men; and after the period of youth was passed, the human frame became incapable of being regenerated from the seeds ofdecay and death, which, by that time, had become strongly developed in it. In short, while young, the possessor of the secret found the terms ofimmortal life too hard to be accepted, since it implied the giving up ofmost of the things that made life desirable in his view; and when he cameto a more reasonable mind, it was too late. And so, in all the generationssince Friar Bacon's time, the Nortons have been born, and enjoyed theiryoung days, and worried through their manhood, and tottered through theirold age (unless taken off sooner by sword, arrow, ball, fever, or whatnot), and died in their beds, like men that had no such option; and sothis old yellow paper has done not the least good to any mortal. Neitherdo I see how it can do any good to you, since you know not the rules, moral or dietetic, that are essential to its effect. But how did you comeby it?"

"It matters not how, " said Septimius, gloomily. "Enough that I am itsrightful possessor and inheritor. Can you read these old characters?"

"Most of them, " said the doctor; "but let me tell you, my young friend, Ihave no faith whatever in this secret; and, having meddled with suchthings myself, I ought to know. The old physicians and chemists hadstrange ideas of the virtues of plants, drugs, and minerals, and equallystrange fancies as to the way of getting those virtues into action. Theywould throw a hundred different potencies into a caldron together, and putthem on the fire, and expect to brew a potency containing all theirpotencies, and having a different virtue of its own. Whereas, the mostlikely result would be that they would counteract one another, and theconcoction be of no virtue at all; or else some more powerful ingredientwould tincture the whole. "

He read the paper again, and continued:--

"I see nothing else so remarkable in this recipe, as that it is chieflymade up of some of the commonest things that grow; plants that you setyour foot upon at your very threshold, in your garden, in your wood-walks, wherever you go. I doubt not old Aunt Keziah knows them, and very likelyshe has brewed them up in that hell-drink, the remembrance of which isstill rankling in my stomach. I thought I had swallowed the Devil himself, whom the old woman had been boiling down. It would be curious enough ifthe hideous decoction was the same as old Friar Bacon and his acolytediscovered by their science! One ingredient, however, one of those plants, I scarcely think the old lady can have put into her pot of Devil's elixir;for it is a rare plant, that does not grow in these parts. "

"And what is that?" asked Septimius. 

"_Sanguinea sanguinissima_" said the doctor; "it has no vulgar name;but it produces a very beautiful flower, which I have never seen, thoughsome seeds of it were sent me by a learned friend in Siberia. The others, divested of their Latin names, are as common as plantain, pig-weed, andburdock; and it stands to reason that, if vegetable Nature has any suchwonderfully efficacious medicine in store for men, and means them to useit, she would have strewn it everywhere plentifully within their reach. "

"But, after all, it would be a mockery on the old dame's part, " said theyoung man, somewhat bitterly, "since she would thus hold the desired thingseemingly within our reach; but because she never tells us how to prepareand obtain its efficacy, we miss it just as much as if all the ingredientswere hidden from sight and knowledge in the centre of the earth. We arethe playthings and fools of Nature, which she amuses herself with duringour little lifetime, and then breaks for mere sport, and laughs in ourfaces as she does so. "

"Take care, my good fellow, " said the doctor, with his great coarse laugh. "I rather suspect that you have already got beyond the age when the greatmedicine could do you good; that speech indicates a great toughness andhardness and bitterness about the heart that does not accumulate in ourtender years. "

Septimius took little or no notice of the raillery of the grim old doctor, but employed the rest of the time in getting as much information as hecould out of his guest; and though he could not bring himself to show himthe precious and sacred manuscript, yet he questioned him as closely aspossible without betraying his secret, as to the modes of finding outcryptic writings. The doctor was not without the perception that hisdark-browed, keen-eyed acquaintance had some purpose not openly avowed inall these pertinacious, distinct questions; he discovered a centralreference in them all, and perhaps knew that Septimius must have in hispossession some writing in hieroglyphics, cipher, or other secret mode, that conveyed instructions how to operate with the strange recipe that hehad shown him. 

"You had better trust me fully, my good sir, " said he. "Not but what I willgive you all the aid I can without it; for you have done me a greaterbenefit than you are aware of, beforehand. No--you will not? Well, if youcan change your mind, seek me out in Boston, where I have seen fit tosettle in the practice of my profession, and I will serve you according toyour folly; for folly it is, I warn you. "

Nothing else worthy of record is known to have passed during the doctor'svisit; and in due time he disappeared, as it were, in a whiff oftobacco-smoke, leaving an odor of brandy and tobacco behind him, and atraditionary memory of a wizard that had been there. Septimius went towork with what items of knowledge he had gathered from him; but theinterview had at least made him aware of one thing, which was, that hemust provide himself with all possible quantity of scientific knowledge ofbotany, and perhaps more extensive knowledge, in order to be able toconcoct the recipe. It was the fruit of all the scientific attainment ofthe age that produced it (so said the legend, which seemed reasonableenough), a great philosopher had wrought his learning into it; and thishad been attempered, regulated, improved, by the quick, bright intellectof his scholar. Perhaps, thought Septimius, another deep and earnestintelligence added to these two may bring the precious recipe to stillgreater perfection. At least it shall be tried. So thinking, he gatheredtogether all the books that he could find relating to such studies; hespent one day, moreover, in a walk to Cambridge, where he searched thealcoves of the college library for such works as it contained; andborrowing them from the war-disturbed institution of learning, he betookhimself homewards, and applied himself to the study with an earnestness ofzealous application that perhaps has been seldom equalled in a study of soquiet a character. A month or two of study, with practice upon such plantsas he found upon his hill-top, and along the brook and in otherneighboring localities, sufficed to do a great deal for him. In thispursuit he was assisted by Sibyl, who proved to have great knowledge insome botanical departments, especially among flowers; and in her cold andquiet way, she met him on this subject and glided by his side, as she haddone so long, a companion, a daily observer and observed of him, mixingherself up with his pursuits, as if she were an attendant sprite uponhim. 

But this pale girl was not the only associate of his studies, the onlyinstructress, whom Septimius found. The observation which DoctorPortsoaken made about the fantastic possibility that Aunt Keziah mighthave inherited the same recipe from her Indian ancestry which had beenstruck out by the science of Friar Bacon and his pupil had not failed toimpress Septimius, and to remain on his memory. So, not long after thedoctor's departure, the young man took occasion one evening to say to hisaunt that he thought his stomach was a little out of order with too muchapplication, and that perhaps she could give him some herb-drink or otherthat would be good for him. 

"That I can, Seppy, my darling, " said the old woman, "and I'm glad you havethe sense to ask for it at last. Here it is in this bottle; and thoughthat foolish, blaspheming doctor turned up his old brandy nose at it, I'lldrink with him any day and come off better than he. "

So saying, she took out of the closet her brown jug, stopped with a corkthat had a rag twisted round it to make it tighter, filled a mug half fullof the concoction and set it on the table before Septimius. 

"There, child, smell of that; the smell merely will do you good; but drinkit down, and you'll live the longer for it. "

"Indeed, Aunt Keziah, is that so?" asked Septimius, a little startled by arecommendation which in some measure tallied with what he wanted in amedicine. "That's a good quality. "

He looked into the mug, and saw a turbid, yellow concoction, not at allattractive to the eye; he smelt of it, and was partly of opinion that AuntKeziah had mixed a certain unfragrant vegetable, called skunk-cabbage, with the other ingredients of her witch-drink. He tasted it; not a meresip, but a good, genuine gulp, being determined to have real proof of whatthe stuff was in all respects. The draught seemed at first to burn in hismouth, unaccustomed to any drink but water, and to go scorching all theway down into his stomach, making him sensible of the depth of his inwardsby a track of fire, far, far down; and then, worse than the fire, came ataste of hideous bitterness and nauseousness, which he had not previouslyconceived to exist, and which threatened to stir up his bowels into utterrevolt; but knowing Aunt Keziah's touchiness with regard to thisconcoction, and how sacred she held it, he made an effort of real heroism, squelched down his agony, and kept his face quiet, with the exception ofone strong convulsion, which he allowed to twist across it for the sake ofsaving his life. 

"It tastes as if it might have great potency in it, Aunt Keziah, " said thisunfortunate young man. "I wish you would tell me what it is made of, andhow you brew it; for I have observed you are very strict and secret aboutit. "

"Aha! you have seen that, have you?" said Aunt Keziah, taking a sip of herbeloved liquid, and grinning at him with a face and eyes as yellow as thatshe was drinking. In fact the idea struck him, that in temper, and allappreciable qualities, Aunt Keziah was a good deal like this drink ofhers, having probably become saturated by them while she drank of it. Andthen, having drunk, she gloated over it, and tasted, and smelt of the cupof this hellish wine, as a winebibber does of that which is most fragrantand delicate. "And you want to know how I make it? But first, child, tellme honestly, do you love this drink of mine? Otherwise, here, and at once, we stop talking about it. "

"I love it for its virtues, " said Septimius, temporizing with hisconscience, "and would prefer it on that account to the rarest wines. "

"So far good, " said Aunt Keziah, who could not well conceive that herliquor should be otherwise than delicious to the palate. "It is the mostvirtuous liquor that ever was; and therefore one need not fear drinkingtoo much of it. And you want to know what it is made of? Well; I haveoften thought of telling you, Seppy, my boy, when you should come to beold enough; for I have no other inheritance to leave you, and you are allof my blood, unless I should happen to have some far-off uncle among theCape Indians. But first, you must know how this good drink, and thefaculty of making it, came down to me from the chiefs, and sachems, andPeow-wows, that were your ancestors and mine, Septimius, and from the oldwizard who was my great-grandfather and yours, and who, they say, addedthe fire-water to the other ingredients, and so gave it the only one thingthat it wanted to make it perfect. "

And so Aunt Keziah, who had now put herself into a most comfortable andjolly state by sipping again, and after pressing Septimius to mind hisdraught (who declined, on the plea that one dram at a time was enough fora new beginner, its virtues being so strong, as well as admirable), theold woman told him a legend strangely wild and uncouth, and mixed up ofsavage and civilized life, and of the superstitions of both, but which yethad a certain analogy, that impressed Septimius much, to the story thatthe doctor had told him. 

She said that, many ages ago, there had been a wild sachem in the forest, aking among the Indians, and from whom, the old lady said, with a look ofpride, she and Septimius were lineally descended, and were probably thevery last who inherited one drop of that royal, wise, and warlike blood. The sachem had lived very long, longer than anybody knew, for the Indianskept no record, and could only talk of a great number of moons; and theysaid he was as old, or older, than the oldest trees; as old as the hillsalmost, and could remember back to the days of godlike men, who had artsthen forgotten. He was a wise and good man, and could foretell as far intothe future as he could remember into the past; and he continued to liveon, till his people were afraid that he would live forever, and so disturbthe whole order of nature; and they thought it time that so good a man, and so great a warrior and wizard, should be gone to the happyhunting-grounds, and that so wise a counsellor should go and tell hisexperience of life to the Great Father, and give him an account of mattershere, and perhaps lead him to make some changes in the conduct of thelower world. And so, all these things duly considered, they veryreverently assassinated the great, never-dying sachem; for though safeagainst disease, and undecayable by age, he was capable of being killed byviolence, though the hardness of his skull broke to fragments the stonetomahawk with which they at first tried to kill him. 

So a deputation of the best and bravest of the tribe went to the greatsachem, and told him their thought, and reverently desired his consent tobe put out of the world; and the undying one agreed with them that it wasbetter for his own comfort that he should die, and that he had long beenweary of the world, having learned all that it could teach him, andhaving, chiefly, learned to despair of ever making the red race muchbetter than they now were. So he cheerfully consented, and told them tokill him if they could; and first they tried the stone hatchet, which wasbroken against his skull; and then they shot arrows at him, which couldnot pierce the toughness of his skin; and finally they plastered up hisnose and mouth (which kept uttering wisdom to the last) with clay, and sethim to bake in the sun; so at last his life burnt out of his breast, tearing his body to pieces, and he died. 

[_Make this legend grotesque, and express the weariness of the tribe atthe intolerable control the undying one had of them; his always bringingup precepts from his own experience, never consenting to anything new, andso impeding progress; his habits hardening into him, his ascribing tohimself all wisdom, and depriving everybody of his right to successivecommand; his endless talk, and dwelling on the past, so that the worldcould not bear him. Describe his ascetic and severe habits, his rigidcalmness, etc. _]

But before the great sagamore died he imparted to a chosen one of histribe, the next wisest to himself, the secret of a potent and deliciousdrink, the constant imbibing of which, together with his abstinence fromluxury and passion, had kept him alive so long, and would doubtless havecompelled him to live forever. This drink was compounded of manyingredients, all of which were remembered and handed down in tradition, save one, which, either because it was nowhere to be found, or for someother reason, was forgotten; so that the drink ceased to give immortallife as before. They say it was a beautiful purple flower. [_Perhaps theDevil taught him the drink, or else the Great Spirit, --doubtfulwhich. _] But it still was a most excellent drink, and conducive tohealth, and the cure of all diseases; and the Indians had it at the timeof the settlement by the English; and at one of those wizard meetings inthe forest, where the Black Man used to meet his red children and hiswhite ones, and be jolly with them, a great Indian wizard taught thesecret to Septimius's great-grandfather, who was a wizard, and died forit; and he, in return, taught the Indians to mix it with rum, thinkingthat this might be the very ingredient that was missing, and that byadding it he might give endless life to himself and all his Indianfriends, among whom he had taken a wife. 

"But your great-grandfather, you know, had not a fair chance to test itsvirtues, having been hanged for a wizard; and as for the Indians, theyprobably mixed too much fire-water with their liquid, so that it burntthem up, and they all died; and my mother, and her mother, --who taught thedrink to me, --and her mother afore her, thought it a sin to try to livelonger than the Lord pleased, so they let themselves die. And though thedrink is good, Septimius, and toothsome, as you see, yet I sometimes feelas if I were getting old, like other people, and may die in the course ofthe next half-century; so perhaps the rum was not just the thing that waswanting to make up the recipe. But it is very good! Take a drop more ofit, dear. "

"Not at present, I thank you, Aunt Keziah, " said Septimius, gravely; "butwill you tell me what the ingredients are, and how you make it?"

"Yes, I will, my boy, and you shall write them down, " said the old woman;"for it's a good drink, and none the worse, it may be, for not making youlive forever. I sometimes think I had as lief go to heaven as keep onliving here. "

Accordingly, making Septimius take pen and ink, she proceeded to tell him alist of plants and herbs, and forest productions, and he was surprised tofind that it agreed most wonderfully with the recipe contained in the oldmanuscript, as he had puzzled it out, and as it had been explained by thedoctor. There were a few variations, it is true; but even here there was aclose analogy, plants indigenous to America being substituted for cognateproductions, the growth of Europe. Then there was another difference inthe mode of preparation, Aunt Keziah's nostrum being a concoction, whereasthe old manuscript gave a process of distillation. This similarity had astrong effect on Septimius's imagination. Here was, in one case, a drinksuggested, as might be supposed, to a primitive people by somethingsimilar to that instinct by which the brute creation recognizes themedicaments suited to its needs, so that they mixed up fragrant herbs forreasons wiser than they knew, and made them into a salutary potion; andhere, again, was a drink contrived by the utmost skill of a greatcivilized philosopher, searching the whole field of science for hispurpose; and these two drinks proved, in all essential particulars, to beidentically the same. 

"O Aunt Keziah, " said he, with a longing earnestness, "are you sure thatyou cannot remember that one ingredient?"

"No, Septimius, I cannot possibly do it, " said she. "I have tried manythings, skunk-cabbage, wormwood, and a thousand things; for it is truly apity that the chief benefit of the thing should be lost for so little. Butthe only effect was, to spoil the good taste of the stuff, and, two orthree times, to poison myself, so that I broke out all over blotches, andonce lost the use of my left arm, and got a dizziness in the head, and arheumatic twist in my knee, a hardness of hearing, and a dimness of sight, and the trembles; all of which I certainly believe to have been caused bymy putting something else into this blessed drink besides the good NewEngland rum. Stick to that, Seppy, my dear. "

So saying, Aunt Keziah took yet another sip of the beloved liquid, aftervainly pressing Septimius to do the like; and then lighting her old claypipe, she sat down in the chimney-corner, meditating, dreaming, mutteringpious prayers and ejaculations, and sometimes looking up the wide flue ofthe chimney, with thoughts, perhaps, how delightful it must have been tofly up there, in old times, on excursions by midnight into the forest, where was the Black Man, and the Puritan deacons and ladies, and thosewild Indian ancestors of hers; and where the wildness of the forest was sogrim and delightful, and so unlike the common-placeness in which she spenther life. For thus did the savage strain of the woman, mixed up as it waswith the other weird and religious parts of her composition, sometimessnatch her back into barbarian life and its instincts; and in Septimius, though further diluted, and modified likewise by higher cultivation, therewas the same tendency. 

Septimius escaped from the old woman, and was glad to breathe the free airagain; so much had he been wrought upon by her wild legends and wildcharacter, the more powerful by its analogy with his own; and perhaps, too, his brain had been a little bewildered by the draught of herdiabolical concoction which she had compelled him to take. At any rate, hewas glad to escape to his hill-top, the free air of which had doubtlesscontributed to keep him in health through so long a course of morbidthought and estranged study as he had addicted himself to. 

Here, as it happened, he found both Rose Garfield and Sibyl Dacy, whom thepleasant summer evening had brought out. They had formed a friendship, orat least society; and there could not well be a pair more unlike, --the oneso natural, so healthy, so fit to live in the world; the other such amorbid, pale thing. So there they were, walking arm in arm, with one armround each other's waist, as girls love to do. They greeted the young manin their several ways, and began to walk to and fro together, looking atthe sunset as it came on, and talking of things on earth and in theclouds. 

"When has Robert Hagburn been heard from?" asked Septimius, who, involvedin his own pursuits, was altogether behindhand in the matters of thewar, --shame to him for it!

"There came news, two days past, " said Rose, blushing. "He is on his wayhome with the remnant of General Arnold's command, and will be heresoon. "

"He is a brave fellow, Robert, " said Septimius, carelessly. "And I knownot, since life is so short, that anything better can be done with it thanto risk it as he does. "

"I truly think not, " said Rose Garfield, composedly. 

"What a blessing it is to mortals, " said Sibyl Dacy, "what a kindness ofProvidence, that life is made so uncertain; that death is thrown in amongthe possibilities of our being; that these awful mysteries are thrownaround us, into which we may vanish! For, without it, how would it bepossible to be heroic, how should we plod along in commonplaces forever, never dreaming high things, never risking anything? For my part, I thinkman is more favored than the angels, and made capable of higher heroism, greater virtue, and of a more excellent spirit than they, because we havesuch a mystery of grief and terror around us; whereas they, being in acertainty of God's light, seeing his goodness and his purposes moreperfectly than we, cannot be so brave as often poor weak man, and weakerwoman, has the opportunity to be, and sometimes makes use of it. God gavethe whole world to man, and if he is left alone with it, it will make aclod of him at last; but, to remedy that, God gave man a grave, and itredeems all, while it seems to destroy all, and makes an immortal spiritof him in the end. "

"Dear Sibyl, you are inspired, " said Rose, gazing in her face. 

"I think you ascribe a great deal too much potency to the grave, " saidSeptimius, pausing involuntarily alone by the little hillock, whosecontents he knew so well. "The grave seems to me a vile pitfall, put rightin our pathway, and catching most of us, --all of us, --causing us to tumblein at the most inconvenient opportunities, so that all human life is ajest and a farce, just for the sake of this inopportune death; for Iobserve it never waits for us to accomplish anything: we may have thesalvation of a country in hand, but we are none the less likely to die forthat. So that, being a believer, on the whole, in the wisdom andgraciousness of Providence, I am convinced that dying is a mistake, andthat by and by we shall overcome it. I say there is no use in the grave. "

"I still adhere to what I said, " answered Sibyl Dacy; "and besides, thereis another use of a grave which I have often observed in old Englishgraveyards, where the moss grows green, and embosses the letters of thegravestones; and also graves are very good for flower-beds. "

Nobody ever could tell when the strange girl was going to say what waslaughable, --when what was melancholy; and neither of Sibyl's auditors knewquite what to make of this speech. Neither could Septimius fail to be alittle startled by seeing her, as she spoke of the grave as a flower-bed, stoop down to the little hillock to examine the flowers, which, indeed, seemed to prove her words by growing there in strange abundance, and ofmany sorts; so that, if they could all have bloomed at once, the spotwould have looked like a bouquet by itself, or as if the earth wererichest in beauty there, or as if seeds had been lavished by some florist. Septimius could not account for it, for though the hill-side did producecertain flowers, --the aster, the golden-rod, the violet, and other suchsimple and common things, --yet this seemed as if a carpet of bright colorshad been thrown down there and covered the spot. 

"This is very strange, " said he. 

"Yes, " said Sibyl Dacy, "there is some strange richness in this little spotof soil. "

"Where could the seeds have come from?--that is the greatest wonder, " saidRose. "You might almost teach me botany, methinks, on this one spot. "

"Do you know this plant?" asked Sibyl of Septimius, pointing to one not yetin flower, but of singular leaf, that was thrusting itself up out of theground, on the very centre of the grave, over where the breast of thesleeper below might seem to be. "I think there is no other here like it. "

Septimius stooped down to examine it, and was convinced that it was unlikeanything he had seen of the flower kind; a leaf of a dark green, withpurple veins traversing it, it had a sort of questionable aspect, as someplants have, so that you would think it very likely to be poison, andwould not like to touch or smell very intimately, without first inquiringwho would be its guarantee that it should do no mischief. That it had somerichness or other, either baneful or beneficial, you could not doubt. 

"I think it poisonous, " said Rose Garfield, shuddering, for she was aperson so natural she hated poisonous things, or anything speckledespecially, and did not, indeed, love strangeness. "Yet I should notwonder if it bore a beautiful flower by and by. Nevertheless, if I were todo just as I feel inclined, I should root it up and fling it away. "

"Shall she do so?" said Sibyl to Septimius. 

"Not for the world, " said he, hastily. "Above all things, I desire to seewhat will come of this plant. "

"Be it as you please, " said Sibyl. "Meanwhile, if you like to sit down hereand listen to me, I will tell you a story that happens to come into mymind just now, --I cannot tell why. It is a legend of an old hall that Iknow well, and have known from my childhood, in one of the northerncounties of England, where I was born. Would you like to hear it, Rose?"

"Yes, of all things, " said she. "I like all stories of hall and cottage inthe old country, though now we must not call it our country any more. "

Sibyl looked at Septimius, as if to inquire whether he, too, chose tolisten to her story, and he made answer:--

"Yes, I shall like to hear the legend, if it is a genuine one that has beenadopted into the popular belief, and came down in chimney-corners with thesmoke and soot that gathers there; and incrusted over with humanity, bypassing from one homely mind to another. Then, such stories get to betrue, in a certain sense, and indeed in that sense may be called truethroughout, for the very nucleus, the fiction in them, seems to have comeout of the heart of man in a way that cannot be imitated of maliceaforethought. Nobody can make a tradition; it takes a century to makeit. "

"I know not whether this legend has the character you mean, " said Sibyl, "but it has lived much more than a century; and here it is. 

 * * * * *

"On the threshold of one of the doors of ---- Hall there is a bloodyfootstep impressed into the doorstep, and ruddy as if the bloody foot hadjust trodden there; and it is averred that, on a certain night of theyear, and at a certain hour of the night, if you go and look at thatdoorstep you will see the mark wet with fresh blood. Some have pretendedto say that this appearance of blood was but dew; but can dew redden acambric handkerchief? Will it crimson the fingertips when you touch it?And that is what the bloody footstep will surely do when the appointednight and hour come round, this very year, just as it would three hundredyears ago. 

"Well; but how did it come there? I know not precisely in what age it was, but long ago, when light was beginning to shine into what were called thedark ages, there was a lord of ---- Hall who applied himself deeply toknowledge and science, under the guidance of the wisest man of thatage, --a man so wise that he was thought to be a wizard; and, indeed, hemay have been one, if to be a wizard consists in having command oversecret powers of nature, that other men do not even suspect the existenceof, and the control of which enables one to do feats that seem aswonderful as raising the dead. It is needless to tell you all the strangestories that have survived to this day about the old Hall; and how it isbelieved that the master of it, owing to his ancient science, has still asort of residence there, and control of the place; and how, in one of thechambers, there is still his antique table, and his chair, and some rudeold instruments and machinery, and a book, and everything in readiness, just as if he might still come back to finish some experiment. What it isimportant to say is, that one of the chief things to which the old lordapplied himself was to discover the means of prolonging his own life, sothat its duration should be indefinite, if not infinite; and such was hisscience, that he was believed to have attained this magnificent and awfulpurpose. 

"So, as you may suppose, the man of science had great joy in having donethis thing, both for the pride of it, and because it was so delightful athing to have before him the prospect of endless time, which he mightspend in adding more and more to his science, and so doing good to theworld; for the chief obstruction to the improvement of the world and thegrowth of knowledge is, that mankind cannot go straightforward in it, butcontinually there have to be new beginnings, and it takes every new manhalf his life, if not the whole of it, to come up to the point where hispredecessor left off. And so this noble man--this man of a noblepurpose--spent many years in finding out this mighty secret; and at last, it is said, he succeeded. But on what terms?

"Well, it is said that the terms were dreadful and horrible; insomuch thatthe wise man hesitated whether it were lawful and desirable to takeadvantage of them, great as was the object in view. 

"You see, the object of the lord of ---- Hall was to take a life from thecourse of Nature, and Nature did not choose to be defrauded; so that, great as was the power of this scientific man over her, she would notconsent that he should escape the necessity of dying at his proper time, except upon condition of sacrificing some other life for his; and this wasto be done once for every thirty years that he chose to live, thirty yearsbeing the account of a generation of man; and if in any way, in that time, this lord could be the death of a human being, that satisfied therequisition, and he might live on. There is a form of the legend whichsays, that one of the ingredients of the drink which the nobleman brewedby his science was the heart's blood of a pure young boy or girl. But thisI reject, as too coarse an idea; and, indeed, I think it may be taken tomean symbolically, that the person who desires to engross to himself morethan his share of human life must do it by sacrificing to his selfishnesssome dearest interest of another person, who has a good right to life, andmay be as useful in it as he. 

"Now, this lord was a just man by nature, and if he had gone astray, it wasgreatly by reason of his earnest wish to do something for the poor, wicked, struggling, bloody, uncomfortable race of man, to which hebelonged. He bethought himself whether he would have a right to take thelife of one of those creatures, without their own consent, in order toprolong his own; and after much arguing to and fro, he came to theconclusion that he should not have the right, unless it were a life overwhich he had control, and which was the next to his own. He looked roundhim; he was a lonely and abstracted man, secluded by his studies fromhuman affections, and there was but one human being whom he caredfor;--that was a beautiful kinswoman, an orphan, whom his father hadbrought up, and, dying, left her to his care. There was great kindness andaffection--as great as the abstracted nature of his pursuits wouldallow--on the part of this lord towards the beautiful young girl; but notwhat is called love, --at least, he never acknowledged it to himself. But, looking into his heart, he saw that she, if any one, was to be the personwhom the sacrifice demanded, and that he might kill twenty others withouteffect, but if he took the life of this one, it would make the charmstrong and good. 

"My friends, I have meditated many a time on this ugly feature of mylegend, and am unwilling to take it in the literal sense; so I conceiveits spiritual meaning (for everything, you know, has its spiritualmeaning, which to the literal meaning is what the soul is to thebody), --its spiritual meaning was, that to the deep pursuit of science wemust sacrifice great part of the joy of life; that nobody can be great, and do great things, without giving up to death, so far as he regards hisenjoyment of it, much that he would gladly enjoy; and in that sense Ichoose to take it. But the earthly old legend will have it that this mad, high-minded, heroic, murderous lord did insist upon it with himself thathe must murder this poor, loving, and beloved child. 

"I do not wish to delay upon this horrible matter, and to tell you how heargued it with himself; and how, the more and more he argued it, the morereasonable it seemed, the more absolutely necessary, the more a duty thatthe terrible sacrifice should be made. Here was this great good to be doneto mankind, and all that stood in the way of it was one little delicatelife, so frail that it was likely enough to be blown out, any day, by themere rude blast that the rush of life creates, as it streams along, or byany slightest accident; so good and pure, too, that she was quite unfitfor this world, and not capable of any happiness in it; and all that wasasked of her was to allow herself to be transported to a place where shewould be happy, and would find companions fit for her, --which he, her onlypresent companion, certainly was not. In fine, he resolved to shed thesweet, fragrant blood of this little violet that loved him so. 

"Well; let us hurry over this part of the story as fast as we can. He didslay this pure young girl; he took her into the wood near the house, anold wood that is standing yet, with some of its magnificent oaks; and thenhe plunged a dagger into her heart, after they had had a very tender andloving talk together, in which he had tried to open the matter tenderly toher, and make her understand that, though he was to slay her, it wasreally for the very reason that he loved her better than anything else inthe world, and that he would far rather die himself, if that would answerthe purpose at all. Indeed, he is said to have offered her the alternativeof slaying him, and taking upon herself the burden of indefinite life, andthe studies and pursuits by which he meant to benefit mankind. But she, itis said, --this noble, pure, loving child, --she looked up into his face andsmiled sadly, and then snatching the dagger from him, she plunged it intoher own heart. I cannot tell whether this be true, or whether she waitedto be killed by him; but this I know, that in the same circumstances Ithink I should have saved my lover or my friend the pain of killing me. There she lay dead, at any rate, and he buried her in the wood, andreturned to the house; and, as it happened, he had set his right foot inher blood, and his shoe was wet in it, and by some miraculous fate it lefta track all along the wood-path, and into the house, and on the stonesteps of the threshold, and up into his chamber, all along; and theservants saw it the next day, and wondered, and whispered, and missed thefair young girl, and looked askance at their lord's right foot, and turnedpale, all of them, as death. 

"And next, the legend says, that Sir Forrester was struck with horror atwhat he had done, and could not bear the laboratory where he had toiled solong, and was sick to death of the object that he had pursued, and wasmost miserable, and fled from his old Hall, and was gone full many a day. But all the while he was gone there was the mark of a bloody footstepimpressed upon the stone doorstep of the Hall. The track had lain allalong through the wood-path, and across the lawn, to the old Gothic doorof the Hall; but the rain, the English rain, that is always falling, hadcome the next day, and washed it all away. The track had lain, too, acrossthe broad hall, and up the stairs, and into the lord's study; but there ithad lain on the rushes that were strewn there, and these the servants hadgathered carefully up, and thrown them away, and spread fresh ones. Sothat it was only on the threshold that the mark remained. 

"But the legend says, that wherever Sir Forrester went, in his wanderingsabout the world, he left a bloody track behind him. It was wonderful, andvery inconvenient, this phenomenon. When he went into a church, you wouldsee the track up the broad aisle, and a little red puddle in the placewhere he sat or knelt. Once he went to the king's court, and there being atrack up to the very throne, the king frowned upon him, so that he nevercame there any more. Nobody could tell how it happened; his foot was notseen to bleed, only there was the bloody track behind him, wherever hewent; and he was a horror-stricken man, always looking behind him to seethe track, and then hurrying onward, as if to escape his own tracks; butalways they followed him as fast. 

"In the hall of feasting, there was the bloody track to his chair. Thelearned men whom he consulted about this strange difficulty conferred withone another, and with him, who was equal to any of them, and pished andpshawed, and said, 'Oh, there is nothing miraculous in this; it is only anatural infirmity, which can easily be put an end to, though, perhaps, thestoppage of such an evacuation will cause damage to other parts of theframe. ' Sir Forrester always said, 'Stop it, my learned brethren, if youcan; no matter what the consequences. ' And they did their best, butwithout result; so that he was still compelled to leave his bloody trackon their college-rooms and combination-rooms, the same as elsewhere; andin street and in wilderness; yes, and in the battle-field, they said, histrack looked freshest and reddest of all. So, at last, finding the noticehe attracted inconvenient, this unfortunate lord deemed it best to go backto his own Hall, where, living among faithful old servants born in thefamily, he could hush the matter up better than elsewhere, and not bestared at continually, or, glancing round, see people holding up theirhands in terror at seeing a bloody track behind him. And so home he came, and there he saw the bloody track on the doorstep, and dolefully went intothe hall, and up the stairs, an old servant ushering him into his chamber, and half a dozen others following behind, gazing, shuddering, pointingwith quivering fingers, looking horror-stricken in one another's palefaces, and the moment he had passed, running to get fresh rushes, and toscour the stairs. The next day, Sir Forrester went into the wood, and bythe aged oak he found a grave, and on the grave he beheld a beautifulcrimson flower; the most gorgeous and beautiful, surely, that ever grew;so rich it looked, so full of potent juice. That flower he gathered; andthe spirit of his scientific pursuits coming upon him, he knew that thiswas the flower, produced out of a human life, that was essential to theperfection of his recipe for immortality; and he made the drink, and drankit, and became immortal in woe and agony, still studying, still growingwiser and more wretched in every age. By and by he vanished from the oldHall, but not by death; for, from generation to generation, they say thata bloody track is seen around that house, and sometimes it is tracked upinto the chambers, so freshly that you see he must have passed a shorttime before; and he grows wiser and wiser, and lonelier and lonelier, fromage to age. And this is the legend of the bloody footstep, which I myselfhave seen at the Hall door. As to the flower, the plant of it continuedfor several years to grow out of the grave; and after a while, perhaps acentury ago, it was transplanted into the garden of ---- Hall, andpreserved with great care, and is so still. And as the family attribute akind of sacredness, or cursedness, to the flower, they can hardly beprevailed upon to give any of the seeds, or allow it to be propagatedelsewhere, though the king should send to ask it. It is said, too, thatthere is still in the family the old lord's recipe for immortality, andthat several of his collateral descendants have tried to concoct it, andinstil the flower into it, and so give indefinite life; butunsuccessfully, because the seeds of the flower must be planted in a freshgrave of bloody death, in order to make it effectual. "

 * * * * *

So ended Sibyl's legend; in which Septimius was struck by a certain analogyto Aunt Keziah's Indian legend, --both referring to a flower growing out ofa grave; and also he did not fail to be impressed with the wildcoincidence of this disappearance of an ancestor of the family long ago, and the appearance, at about the same epoch, of the first known ancestorof his own family, the man with wizard's attributes, with the bloodyfootstep, and whose sudden disappearance became a myth, under the ideathat the Devil carried him away. Yet, on the whole, this wild tradition, doubtless becoming wilder in Sibyl's wayward and morbid fancy, had theeffect to give him a sense of the fantasticalness of his present pursuit, and that in adopting it, he had strayed into a region long abandoned tosuperstition, and where the shadows of forgotten dreams go when men aredone with them; where past worships are; where great Pan went when he diedto the outer world; a limbo into which living men sometimes stray whenthey think themselves sensiblest and wisest, and whence they do not oftenfind their way back into the real world. Visions of wealth, visions offame, visions of philanthropy, --all visions find room here, and glideabout without jostling. When Septimius came to look at the matter in hispresent mood, the thought occurred to him that he had perhaps got intosuch a limbo, and that Sibyl's legend, which looked so wild, might be allof a piece with his own present life; for Sibyl herself seemed anillusion, and so, most strangely, did Aunt Keziah, whom he had known allhis life, with her homely and quaint characteristics; the grim doctor, with his brandy and his German pipe, impressed him in the same way; andthese, altogether, made his homely cottage by the wayside seem anunsubstantial edifice, such as castles in the air are built of, and theground he trod on unreal; and that grave, which he knew to contain thedecay of a beautiful young man, but a fictitious swell, formed by thefantasy of his eyes. All unreal; all illusion! Was Rose Garfield adeception too, with her daily beauty, and daily cheerfulness, and dailyworth? In short, it was such a moment as I suppose all men feel (at least, I can answer for one), when the real scene and picture of life swims, jars, shakes, seems about to be broken up and dispersed, like the picturein a smooth pond, when we disturb its tranquil mirror by throwing in astone; and though the scene soon settles itself, and looks as real asbefore, a haunting doubt keeps close at hand, as long as we live, asking, "Is it stable? Am I sure of it? Am I certainly not dreaming? See; ittrembles again, ready to dissolve. "

 * * * * *

Applying himself with earnest diligence to his attempt to decipher andinterpret the mysterious manuscript, working with his whole mind andstrength, Septimius did not fail of some flattering degree of success. 

A good deal of the manuscript, as has been said, was in an ancient Englishscript, although so uncouth and shapeless were the characters, that it wasnot easy to resolve them into letters, or to believe that they wereanything but arbitrary and dismal blots and scrawls upon the yellow paper;without meaning, vague, like the misty and undefined germs of thought asthey exist in our minds before clothing themselves in words. These, however, as he concentrated his mind upon them, took distincter shape, like cloudy stars at the power of the telescope, and became sometimesEnglish, sometimes Latin, strangely patched together, as if, so accustomedwas the writer to use that language in which all the science of that agewas usually embodied, that he really mixed it unconsciously with thevernacular, or used both indiscriminately. There was some Greek, too, butnot much. Then frequently came in the cipher, to the study of whichSeptimius had applied himself for some time back, with the aid of thebooks borrowed from the college library, and not without success. Indeed, it appeared to him, on close observation, that it had not been theintention of the writer really to conceal what he had written from anyearnest student, but rather to lock it up for safety in a sort of coffer, of which diligence and insight should be the key, and the keenintelligence with which the meaning was sought should be the test of theseeker's being entitled to possess the secret treasure. 

Amid a great deal of misty stuff, he found the document to consist chiefly, contrary to his supposition beforehand, of certain rules of life; he wouldhave taken it, on a casual inspection, for an essay of counsel, addressedby some great and sagacious man to a youth in whom he felt aninterest, --so secure and good a doctrine of life was propounded, suchexcellent maxims there were, such wisdom in all matters that came withinthe writer's purview. It was as much like a digested synopsis of some oldphilosopher's wise rules of conduct, as anything else. But on closerinspection, Septimius, in his unsophisticated consideration of thismatter, was not so well satisfied. True, everything that was said seemednot discordant with the rules of social morality; not unwise: it wasshrewd, sagacious; it did not appear to infringe upon the rights ofmankind; but there was something left out, something unsatisfactory, --whatwas it? There was certainly a cold spell in the document; a magic, not offire, but of ice; and Septimius the more exemplified its power, in that hesoon began to be insensible of it. It affected him as if it had beenwritten by some greatly wise and worldly-experienced man, like the writerof Ecclesiastes; for it was full of truth. It was a truth that does notmake men better, though perhaps calmer; and beneath which the buds ofhappiness curl up like tender leaves in a frost. What was the matter withthis document, that the young man's youth perished out of him as he read?What icy hand had written, it, so that the heart was chilled out of thereader? Not that Septimius was sensible of this character; at least, notlong, --for as he read, there grew upon him a mood of calm satisfaction, such as he had never felt before. His mind seemed to grow clearer; hisperceptions most acute; his sense of the reality of things grew to besuch, that he felt as if he could touch and handle all his thoughts, feelround about all their outline and circumference, and know them with acertainty, as if they were material things. Not that all this was in thedocument itself; but by studying it so earnestly, and, as it were, creating its meaning anew for himself, out of such illegible materials, hecaught the temper of the old writer's mind, after so many ages as thattract had lain in the mouldy and musty manuscript. He was magnetized withhim; a powerful intellect acted powerfully upon him; perhaps, even, therewas a sort of spell and mystic influence imbued into the paper, andmingled with the yellow ink, that steamed forth by the effort of thisyoung man's earnest rubbing, as it were, and by the action of his mind, applied to it as intently as he possibly could; and even his handling thepaper, his bending over it, and breathing upon it, had its effect. 

It is not in our power, nor in our wish, to produce the original form, noryet the spirit, of a production which is better lost to the world: becauseit was the expression of a human intellect originally greatly gifted andcapable of high things, but gone utterly astray, partly by its ownsubtlety, partly by yielding to the temptations of the lower part of itsnature, by yielding the spiritual to a keen sagacity of lower things, until it was quite fallen; and yet fallen in such a way, that it seemednot only to itself, but to mankind, not fallen at all, but wise and good, and fulfilling all the ends of intellect in such a life as ours, andproving, moreover, that earthly life was good, and all that thedevelopment of our nature demanded. All this is better forgotten; betterburnt; better never thought over again; and all the more, because itsaspect was so wise, and even praiseworthy. But what we must preserve of itwere certain rules of life and moral diet, not exactly expressed in thedocument, but which, as it were, on its being duly received intoSeptimius's mind, were precipitated from the rich solution, andcrystallized into diamonds, and which he found to be the moral dietetics, so to speak, by observing which he was to achieve the end of earthlyimmortality, whose physical nostrum was given in the recipe which, withthe help of Doctor Portsoaken and his Aunt Keziah, he had already prettysatisfactorily made out. 

"Keep thy heart at seventy throbs in a minute; all more than that wearsaway life too quickly. If thy respiration be too quick, think with thyselfthat thou hast sinned against natural order and moderation. 

"Drink not wine nor strong drink; and observe that this rule is worthiestin its symbolic meaning. 

"Bask daily in the sunshine and let it rest on thy heart. 

"Run not; leap not; walk at a steady pace, and count thy paces per day. 

"If thou feelest, at any time, a throb of the heart, pause on the instant, and analyze it; fix thy mental eye steadfastly upon it, and inquire whysuch commotion is. 

"Hate not any man nor woman; be not angry, unless at any time thy bloodseem a little cold and torpid; cut out all rankling feelings, they arepoisonous to thee. If, in thy waking moments, or in thy dreams, thou hastthoughts of strife or unpleasantness with any man, strive quietly withthyself to forget him. 

"Have no friendships with an imperfect man, with a man in bad health, ofviolent passions, of any characteristic that evidently disturbs his ownlife, and so may have disturbing influence on thine. Shake not any man bythe hand, because thereby, if there be any evil in the man, it is likelyto be communicated to thee. 

"Kiss no woman if her lips be red; look not upon her if she be very fair. Touch not her hand if thy finger-tips be found to thrill with hers ever solittle. On the whole, shun woman, for she is apt to be a disturbinginfluence. If thou love her, all is over, and thy whole past and remaininglabor and pains will be in vain. 

"Do some decent degree of good and kindness in thy daily life, for theresult is a slight pleasurable sense that will seem to warm and delectatethee with felicitous self-laudings; and all that brings thy thoughts tothyself tends to invigorate that central principle by the growth of whichthou art to give thyself indefinite life. 

"Do not any act manifestly evil; it may grow upon thee, and corrode thee inafter-years. Do not any foolish good act; it may change thy wise habits. 

"Eat no spiced meats. Young chickens, new-fallen lambs, fruits, bread fourdays old, milk, freshest butter will make thy fleshy tabernacle youthful. 

"From sick people, maimed wretches, afflicted people--all of whom showthemselves at variance with things as they should be, --from people beyondtheir wits, from people in a melancholic mood, from people in extravagantjoy, from teething children, from dead corpses, turn away thine eyes anddepart elsewhere. 

"If beggars haunt thee, let thy servants drive them away, thou withdrawingout of ear-shot. 

"Crying and sickly children, and teething children, as aforesaid, carefullyavoid. Drink the breath of wholesome infants as often as thou convenientlycanst, --it is good for thy purpose; also the breath of buxom maids, ifthou mayest without undue disturbance of the flesh, drink it as amorning-draught, as medicine; also the breath of cows as they return fromrich pasture at eventide. 

"If thou seest human poverty, or suffering, and it trouble thee, strivemoderately to relieve it, seeing that thus thy mood will be changed to apleasant self-laudation. 

"Practise thyself in a certain continual smile, for its tendency will be tocompose thy frame of being, and keep thee from too much wear. 

"Search not to see if thou hast a gray hair; scrutinize not thy forehead tofind a wrinkle; nor the corners of thy eyes to discover if they becorrugated. Such things, being gazed at, daily take heart and grow. 

"Desire nothing too fervently, not even life; yet keep thy hold upon itmightily, quietly, unshakably, for as long as thou really art resolved tolive, Death with all his force, shall have no power against thee. 

"Walk not beneath tottering ruins, nor houses being put up, nor climb tothe top of a mast, nor approach the edge of a precipice, nor stand in theway of the lightning, nor cross a swollen river, nor voyage at sea, norride a skittish horse, nor be shot at by an arrow, nor confront a sword, nor put thyself in the way of violent death; for this is hateful, andbreaketh through all wise rules. 

"Say thy prayers at bedtime, if thou deemest it will give thee quietersleep; yet let it not trouble thee if thou forgettest them. 

"Change thy shirt daily; thereby thou castest off yesterday's decay, andimbibest the freshness of the morning's life, which enjoy with smelling toroses, and other healthy and fragrant flowers, and live the longer for it. Roses are made to that end. 

"Read not great poets; they stir up thy heart; and the human heart is asoil which, if deeply stirred, is apt to give out noxious vapors. "

Such were some of the precepts which Septimius gathered and reduced todefinite form out of this wonderful document; and he appreciated theirwisdom, and saw clearly that they must be absolutely essential to thesuccess of the medicine with which they were connected. In themselves, almost, they seemed capable of prolonging life to an indefinite period, sowisely were they conceived, so well did they apply to the causes whichalmost invariably wear away this poor short life of men, years and yearsbefore even the shattered constitutions that they received from theirforefathers need compel them to die. He deemed himself well rewarded forall his labor and pains, should nothing else follow but his reception andproper appreciation of these wise rules; but continually, as he read themanuscript, more truths, and, for aught I know, profounder and morepractical ones, developed themselves; and, indeed, small as the manuscriptlooked, Septimius thought that he should find a volume as big as the mostponderous folio in the college library too small to contain its wisdom. Itseemed to drip and distil with precious fragrant drops, whenever he tookit out of his desk; it diffused wisdom like those vials of perfume which, small as they look, keep diffusing an airy wealth of fragrance for yearsand years together, scattering their virtue in incalculable volumes ofinvisible vapor, and yet are none the less in bulk for all they give;whenever he turned over the yellow leaves, bits of gold, diamonds of goodsize, precious pearls, seemed to drop out from between them. 

And now ensued a surprise which, though of a happy kind, was almost toomuch for him to bear; for it made his heart beat considerably faster thanthe wise rules of his manuscript prescribed. Going up on his hill-top, assummer wore away (he had not been there for some time), and walking by thelittle flowery hillock, as so many a hundred times before, what should hesee there but a new flower, that during the time he had been poring overthe manuscript so sedulously had developed itself, blossomed, put forthits petals, bloomed into full perfection, and now, with the dew of themorning upon it, was waiting to offer itself to Septimius? He trembled ashe looked at it, it was too much almost to bear, --it was so verybeautiful, so very stately, so very rich, so very mysterious andwonderful. It was like a person, like a life! Whence did it come? He stoodapart from it, gazing in wonder; tremulously taking in its aspect, andthinking of the legends he had heard from Aunt Keziah and from Sibyl Dacy;and how that this flower, like the one that their wild traditions told of, had grown out of a grave, --out of a grave in which he had laid one slainby himself. 

The flower was of the richest crimson, illuminated with a golden centre ofa perfect and stately beauty. From the best descriptions that I have beenable to gain of it, it was more like a dahlia than any other flower withwhich I have acquaintance; yet it does not satisfy me to believe it reallyof that species, for the dahlia is not a flower of any deepcharacteristics, either lively or malignant, and this flower, whichSeptimius found so strangely, seems to have had one or the other. If Ihave rightly understood, it had a fragrance which the dahlia lacks; andthere was something hidden in its centre, a mystery, even in its fullestbloom, not developing itself so openly as the heartless, yet notdishonest, dahlia. I remember in England to have seen a flower at EatonHall, in Cheshire, in those magnificent gardens, which may have been likethis, but my remembrance of it is not sufficiently distinct to enable meto describe it better than by saying that it was crimson, with a gleam ofgold in its centre, which yet was partly hidden. It had many petals ofgreat richness. 

Septimius, bending eagerly over the plant, saw that this was not to be theonly flower that it would produce that season; on the contrary, there wasto be a great abundance of them, a luxuriant harvest; as if the crimsonoffspring of this one plant would cover the whole hillock, --as if the deadyouth beneath had burst into a resurrection of many crimson flowers! Andin its veiled heart, moreover, there was a mystery like death, although itseemed to cover something bright and golden. 

Day after day the strange crimson flower bloomed more and more abundantly, until it seemed almost to cover the little hillock, which became a merebed of it, apparently turning all its capacity of production to thisflower; for the other plants, Septimius thought, seemed to shrink away, and give place to it, as if they were unworthy to compare with therichness, glory, and worth of this their queen. The fervent summer burnedinto it, the dew and the rain ministered to it; the soil was rich, for itwas a human heart contributing its juices, --a heart in its fiery youthsodden in its own blood, so that passion, unsatisfied loves and longings, ambition that never won its object, tender dreams and throbs, angers, lusts, hates, all concentrated by life, came sprouting in it, and itsmysterious being, and streaks and shadows, had some meaning in each ofthem. 

The two girls, when they next ascended the hill, saw the strange flower, and Rose admired it, and wondered at it, but stood at a distance, withoutshowing an attraction towards it, rather an undefined aversion, as if shethought it might be a poison flower; at any rate she would not be inclinedto wear it in her bosom. Sibyl Dacy examined it closely, touched itsleaves, smelt it, looked at it with a botanist's eye, and at last remarkedto Rose, "Yes, it grows well in this new soil; methinks it looks like anew human life. "

"What is the strange flower?" asked Rose. 

"The _Sanguinea sanguinissima_" said Sibyl. 

It so happened about this time that poor Aunt Keziah, in spite of herconstant use of that bitter mixture of hers, was in a very bad state ofhealth. She looked all of an unpleasant yellow, with bloodshot eyes; shecomplained terribly of her inwards. She had an ugly rheumatic hitch in hermotion from place to place, and was heard to mutter many wishes that shehad a broomstick to fly about upon, and she used to bind up her head witha dishclout, or what looked to be such, and would sit by the kitchen fireeven in the warm days, bent over it, crouching as if she wanted to takethe whole fire into her poor cold heart or gizzard, --groaning regularlywith each breath a spiteful and resentful groan, as if she foughtwomanfully with her infirmities; and she continually smoked her pipe, andsent out the breath of her complaint visibly in that evil odor; andsometimes she murmured a little prayer, but somehow or other the evil andbitterness, acridity, pepperiness, of her natural disposition overcame theacquired grace which compelled her to pray, insomuch that, after all, youwould have thought the poor old woman was cursing with all her rheumaticmight. All the time an old, broken-nosed, brown earthen jug, covered withthe lid of a black teapot, stood on the edge of the embers, steamingforever, and sometimes bubbling a little, and giving a great puff, as ifit were sighing and groaning in sympathy with poor Aunt Keziah, and whenit sighed there came a great steam of herby fragrance, not particularlypleasant, into the kitchen. And ever and anon, --half a dozen times itmight be, --of an afternoon, Aunt Keziah took a certain bottle from aprivate receptacle of hers, and also a teacup, and likewise a little, old-fashioned silver teaspoon, with which she measured three teaspoonfulsof some spirituous liquor into the teacup, half filled the cup with thehot decoction, drank it off, gave a grunt of content, and for the space ofhalf an hour appeared to find life tolerable. 

But one day poor Aunt Keziah found herself unable, partly from rheumatism, partly from other sickness or weakness, and partly from dolorousill-spirits, to keep about any longer, so she betook herself to her bed;and betimes in the forenoon Septimius heard a tremendous knocking on thefloor of her bedchamber, which happened to be the room above his own. Hewas the only person in or about the house; so with great reluctance, heleft his studies, which were upon the recipe, in respect to which he wastrying to make out the mode of concoction, which was told in such amysterious way that he could not well tell either the quantity of theingredients, the mode of trituration, nor in what way their virtue was tobe extracted and combined. 

Running hastily up stairs, he found Aunt Keziah lying in bed, and groaningwith great spite and bitterness; so that, indeed, it seemed notimprovidential that such an inimical state of mind towards the human racewas accompanied with an almost inability of motion, else it would not besafe to be within a considerable distance of her. 

"Seppy, you good-for-nothing, are you going to see me lying here, dying, without trying to do anything for me?"

"Dying, Aunt Keziah?" repeated the young man. "I hope not! What can I dofor you? Shall I go for Rose? or call a neighbor in? or the doctor?"

"No, no, you fool!" said the afflicted person. "You can do all that anybodycan for me; and that is to put my mixture on the kitchen fire till itsteams, and is just ready to bubble; then measure three teaspoonfuls--orit may be four, as I am very bad--of spirit into a teacup, fill it halffull, --or it may be quite full, for I am very bad, as I said afore; sixteaspoonfuls of spirit into a cup of mixture, and let me have it as soonas may be; and don't break the cup, nor spill the precious mixture, forgoodness knows when I can go into the woods to gather any more. Ah me! ahme! it's a wicked, miserable world, and I am the most miserable creaturein it. Be quick, you good-for-nothing, and do as I say!"

Septimius hastened down; but as he went a thought came into his head, whichit occurred to him might result in great benefit to Aunt Keziah, as wellas to the great cause of science and human good, and to the promotion ofhis own purpose, in the first place. A day or two ago, he had gatheredseveral of the beautiful flowers, and laid them in the fervid sun to dry;and they now seemed to be in about the state in which the old woman wasaccustomed to use her herbs, so far as Septimius had observed. Now ifthese flowers were really, as there was so much reason for supposing, theone ingredient that had for hundreds of years been missing out of AuntKeziah's nostrum, --if it was this which that strange Indian sagamore hadmingled with his drink with such beneficial effect, --why should notSeptimius now restore it, and if it would not make his beloved aunt youngagain, at least assuage the violent symptoms, and perhaps prolong hervaluable life some years, for the solace and delight of her numerousfriends? Septimius, like other people of investigating and active minds, had a great tendency to experiment, and so good an opportunity as thepresent, where (perhaps he thought) there was so little to be risked atworst, and so much to be gained, was not to be neglected; so, without moreado, he stirred three of the crimson flowers into the earthen jug, set iton the edge of the fire, stirred it well, and when it steamed, threw uplittle scarlet bubbles, and was about to boil, he measured out thespirits, as Aunt Keziah had bidden him and then filled the teacup. 

"Ah, this will do her good; little does she think, poor old thing, what arare and costly medicine is about to be given her. This will set her onher feet again. "

The hue was somewhat changed, he thought, from what he had observed of AuntKeziah's customary decoction; instead of a turbid yellow, the crimsonpetals of the flower had tinged it, and made it almost red; not abrilliant red, however, nor the least inviting in appearance. Septimiussmelt it, and thought he could distinguish a little of the rich odor ofthe flower, but was not sure. He considered whether to taste it; but thehorrible flavor of Aunt Keziah's decoction recurred strongly to hisremembrance, and he concluded that were he evidently at the point ofdeath, he might possibly be bold enough to taste it again; but thatnothing short of the hope of a century's existence at least would repayanother taste of that fierce and nauseous bitterness. Aunt Keziah lovedit; and as she brewed, so let her drink. 

He went up stairs, careful not to spill a drop of the brimming cup, andapproached the old woman's bedside, where she lay, groaning as before, andbreaking out into a spiteful croak the moment he was within ear-shot. 

"You don't care whether I live or die, " said she. "You've been waiting inhopes I shall die, and so save yourself further trouble. "

"By no means, Aunt Keziah, " said Septimius. "Here is the medicine, which Ihave warmed, and measured out, and mingled, as well as I knew how; and Ithink it will do you a great deal of good. "

"Won't you taste it, Seppy, my dear?" said Aunt Keziah, mollified by thepraise of her beloved mixture. "Drink first, dear, so that my sick oldlips need not taint it. You look pale, Septimius; it will do you good. "

"No, Aunt Keziah, I do not need it; and it were a pity to waste yourprecious drink, " said he. 

"It does not look quite the right color, " said Aunt Keziah, as she took thecup in her hand. "You must have dropped some soot into it. " Then, as sheraised it to her lips, "It does not smell quite right. But, woe's me! howcan I expect anybody but myself to make this precious drink as it shouldbe?"

She drank it off at two gulps; for she appeared to hurry it off faster thanusual, as if not tempted by the exquisiteness of its flavor to dwell uponit so long. 

"You have not made it just right, Seppy, " said she in a milder tone thanbefore, for she seemed to feel the customary soothing influence of thedraught, "but you'll do better the next time. It had a queer taste, methought; or is it that my mouth is getting out of taste? Hard times itwill be for poor Aunt Kezzy, if she's to lose her taste for the medicinethat, under Providence, has saved her life for so many years. "

She gave back the cup to Septimius, after looking a little curiously at thedregs. 

"It looks like bloodroot, don't it?" said she. "Perhaps it's my own faultafter all. I gathered a fresh bunch of the yarbs yesterday afternoon, andput them to steep, and it may be I was a little blind, for it was betweendaylight and dark, and the moon shone on me before I had finished. Ithought how the witches used to gather their poisonous stuff at suchtimes, and what pleasant uses they made of it, --but those are sinfulthoughts, Seppy, sinful thoughts! so I'll say a prayer and try to go tosleep. I feel very noddy all at once. "

Septimius drew the bedclothes up about her shoulders, for she complained ofbeing very chilly, and, carefully putting her stick within reach, wentdown to his own room, and resumed his studies, trying to make out fromthose aged hieroglyphics, to which he was now so well accustomed, what wasthe precise method of making the elixir of immortality. Sometimes, as menin deep thought do, he rose from his chair, and walked to and fro the fouror five steps or so that conveyed him from end to end of his little room. At one of these times he chanced to look in the little looking-glass thathung between the windows, and was startled at the paleness of his face. Itwas quite white, indeed. Septimius was not in the least a foppish youngman; careless he was in dress, though often his apparel took an unsoughtpicturesqueness that set off his slender, agile figure, perhaps from somequality of spontaneous arrangement that he had inherited from his Indianancestry. Yet many women might have found a charm in that dark, thoughtfulface, with its hidden fire and energy, although Septimius never thought ofits being handsome, and seldom looked at it. Yet now he was drawn to it byseeing how strangely white it was, and, gazing at it, he observed thatsince he considered it last, a very deep furrow, or corrugation, orfissure, it might almost be called, had indented his brow, rising from thecommencement of his nose towards the centre of the forehead. And he knewit was his brooding thought, his fierce, hard determination, his intenseconcentrativeness for so many months, that had been digging that furrow;and it must prove indeed a potent specific of the life-water that wouldsmooth that away, and restore him all the youth and elasticity that he hadburied in that profound grave. 

But why was he so pale? He could have supposed himself startled by someghastly thing that he had just seen; by a corpse in the next room, forinstance; or else by the foreboding that one would soon be there; but yethe was conscious of no tremor in his frame, no terror in his heart; as whyshould there be any? Feeling his own pulse, he found the strong, regularbeat that should be there. He was not ill, nor affrighted; not expectantof any pain. Then why so ghastly pale? And why, moreover, Septimius, didyou listen so earnestly for any sound in Aunt Keziah's chamber? Why didyou creep on tiptoe, once, twice, three times, up to the old woman'schamber, and put your ear to the keyhole, and listen breathlessly? Well;it must have been that he was subconscious that he was trying a boldexperiment, and that he had taken this poor old woman to be the medium ofit, in the hope, of course, that it would turn out well; yet with otherviews than her interest in the matter. What was the harm of that? Medicalmen, no doubt, are always doing so, and he was a medical man for the time. Then why was he so pale?

He sat down and fell into a reverie, which perhaps was partly suggested bythat chief furrow which he had seen, and which we have spoken of, in hisbrow. He considered whether there was anything in this pursuit of his thatused up life particularly fast; so that, perhaps, unless he weresuccessful soon, he should be incapable of renewal; for, looking withinhimself, and considering his mode of being, he had a singular fancy thathis heart was gradually drying up, and that he must continue to get somemoisture for it, or else it would soon be like a withered leaf. Supposinghis pursuit were vain, what a waste he was making of that little treasureof golden days, which was his all! Could this be called life, which he wasleading now? How unlike that of other young men! How unlike that of RobertHagburn, for example! There had come news yesterday of his havingperformed a gallant part in the battle of Monmouth, and being promoted tobe a captain for his brave conduct. Without thinking of long life, hereally lived in heroic actions and emotions; he got much life in a little, and did not fear to sacrifice a lifetime of torpid breaths, if necessary, to the ecstasy of a glorious death!

[_It appears from a written sketch by the author of this story, that hechanged his first plan of making Septimius and Rose lovers, and she was tobe represented as his half-sister, and in the copy for publication thisalteration would have been made_. --ED. ]

And then Robert loved, too, loved his sister Rose, and felt, doubtless, animmortality in that passion. Why could not Septimius love too? It wasforbidden! Well, no matter; whom could he have loved? Who, in all thisworld would have been suited to his secret, brooding heart, that he couldhave let her into its mysterious chambers, and walked with her from onecavernous gloom to another, and said, "Here are my treasures. I make theemistress of all these; with all these goods I thee endow. " And then, revealing to her his great secret and purpose of gaining immortal life, have said: "This shall be thine, too. Thou shalt share with me. We willwalk along the endless path together, and keep one another's hearts warm, and so be content to live. "

Ah, Septimius! but now you are getting beyond those rules of yours, which, cold as they are, have been drawn out of a subtle philosophy, and might, were it possible to follow them out, suffice to do all that you ask ofthem; but if you break them, you do it at the peril of your earthlyimmortality. Each warmer and quicker throb of the heart wears away so muchof life. The passions, the affections, are a wine not to be indulged in. Love, above all, being in its essence an immortal thing, cannot be longcontained in an earthly body, but would wear it out with its own secretpower, softly invigorating as it seems. You must be cold, therefore, Septimius; you must not even earnestly and passionately desire thisimmortality that seems so necessary to you. Else the very wish willprevent the possibility of its fulfilment. 

By and by, to call him out of these rhapsodies, came Rose home; and findingthe kitchen hearth cold, and Aunt Keziah missing, and no dinner by thefire, which was smouldering, --nothing but the portentous earthen jug, which fumed, and sent out long, ill-flavored sighs, she tapped atSeptimius's door, and asked him what was the matter. 

"Aunt Keziah has had an ill turn, " said Septimius, "and has gone to bed. "

"Poor auntie!" said Rose, with her quick sympathy. "I will this moment runup and see if she needs anything. "

"No, Rose, " said Septimius, "she has doubtless gone to sleep, and willawake as well as usual. It would displease her much were you to miss yourafternoon school; so you had better set the table with whatever there isleft of yesterday's dinner, and leave me to take care of auntie. "

"Well, " said Rose, "she loves you best; but if she be really ill, I shallgive up my school and nurse her. "

"No doubt, " said Septimius, "she will be about the house again to-morrow. "

So Rose ate her frugal dinner (consisting chiefly of purslain, and someother garden herbs, which her thrifty aunt had prepared for boiling), andwent away as usual to her school; for Aunt Keziah, as aforesaid, had neverencouraged the tender ministrations of Rose, whose orderly, womanlycharacter, with its well-defined orb of daily and civilized duties, hadalways appeared to strike her as tame; and she once said to her, "You areno squaw, child, and you'll never make a witch. " Nor would she even somuch as let Rose put her tea to steep, or do anything whatever for herselfpersonally; though, certainly, she was not backward in requiring of her adue share of labor for the general housekeeping. 

Septimius was sitting in his room, as the afternoon wore away; because, forsome reason or other, or, quite as likely, for no reason at all, he didnot air himself and his thoughts, as usual, on the hill; so he was sittingmusing, thinking, looking into his mysterious manuscript, when he heardAunt Keziah moving in the chamber above. First she seemed to rattle achair; then she began a slow, regular beat with the stick which Septimiushad left by her bedside, and which startled him strangely, --so that, indeed, his heart beat faster than the five-and-seventy throbs to which hewas restricted by the wise rules that he had digested. So he ran hastilyup stairs, and behold, Aunt Keziah was sitting up in bed, looking verywild, --so wild that you would have thought she was going to fly up chimneythe next minute; her gray hair all dishevelled, her eyes staring, herhands clutching forward, while she gave a sort of howl, what with pain andagitation. 

"Seppy! Seppy!" said she, --"Seppy, my darling! are you quite sure youremember how to make that precious drink?"

"Quite well, Aunt Keziah, " said Septimius, inwardly much alarmed by heraspect, but preserving a true Indian composure of outward mien. "I wroteit down, and could say it by heart besides. Shall I make you a fresh potof it? for I have thrown away the other. "

"That was well, Seppy, " said the poor old woman, "for there is somethingwrong about it; but I want no more, for, Seppy dear, I am going fast outof this world, where you and that precious drink were my only treasuresand comforts. I wanted to know if you remembered the recipe; it is all Ihave to leave you, and the more you drink of it, Seppy, the better. Onlysee to make it right!"

"Dear auntie, what can I do for you?" said Septimius, in muchconsternation, but still calm. "Let me run for the doctor, --for theneighbors? something must be done!"

The old woman contorted herself as if there were a fearful time in herinsides; and grinned, and twisted the yellow ugliness of her face, andgroaned, and howled; and yet there was a tough and fierce kind ofendurance with which she fought with her anguish, and would not yield toit a jot, though she allowed herself the relief of shrieking savagely atit, --much more like a defiance than a cry for mercy. 

"No doctor! no woman!" said she; "if my drink could not save me, what woulda doctor's foolish pills and powders do? And a woman! If old MarthaDenton, the witch, were alive, I would be glad to see her. But otherwomen! Pah! Ah! Ai! Oh! Phew! Ah, Seppy, what a mercy it would be now if Icould set to and blaspheme a bit, and shake my fist at the sky! But I'm aChristian woman, Seppy, --a Christian woman. "

"Shall I send for the minister, Aunt Keziah?" asked Septimius. "He is agood man, and a wise one. "

"No minister for me, Seppy, " said Aunt Keziah, howling as if somebody werechoking her. "He may be a good man, and a wise one, but he's not wiseenough to know the way to my heart, and never a man as was! Eh, Seppy, I'ma Christian woman, but I'm not like other Christian women; and I'm gladI'm going away from this stupid world. I've not been a bad woman, and Ideserve credit for it, for it would have suited me a great deal better tobe bad. Oh, what a delightful time a witch must have had, starting off upchimney on her broomstick at midnight, and looking down from aloft in thesky on the sleeping village far below, with its steeple pointing up ather, so that she might touch the golden weathercock! You, meanwhile, insuch an ecstasy, and all below you the dull, innocent, sober humankind;the wife sleeping by her husband, or mother by her child, squalling withwind in its stomach; the goodman driving up his cattle and hisplough, --all so innocent, all so stupid, with their dull days just alike, one after another. And you up in the air, sweeping away to some nook inthe forest! Ha! What's that? A wizard! Ha! ha! Known below as a deacon!There is Goody Chickering! How quietly she sent the young people to bedafter prayers! There is an Indian; there a nigger; they all have equalrights and privileges at a witch-meeting. Phew! the wind blows cold uphere! Why does not the Black Man have the meeting at his own kitchenhearth? Ho! ho! Oh dear me! But I'm a Christian woman and no witch; butthose must have been gallant times!"

Doubtless it was a partial wandering of the mind that took the poor oldwoman away on this old-witch flight; and it was very curious and pitifulto witness the compunction with which she returned to herself and tookherself to task for the preference which, in her wild nature, she couldnot help giving to harum-scarum wickedness over tame goodness. Now shetried to compose herself, and talk reasonably and godly. 

"Ah, Septimius, my dear child, never give way to temptation, nor consent tobe a wizard, though the Black Man persuade you ever so hard. I know hewill try. He has tempted me, but I never yielded, never gave him his will;and never do you, my boy, though you, with your dark complexion, and yourbrooding brow, and your eye veiled, only when it suddenly looks out with aflash of fire in it, are the sort of man he seeks most, and thatafterwards serves him. But don't do it, Septimius. But if you could be anIndian, methinks it would be better than this tame life we lead. 'T wouldhave been better for me, at all events. Oh, how pleasant 't would havebeen to spend my life wandering in the woods, smelling the pines and thehemlock all day, and fresh things of all kinds, and no kitchen work todo, --not to rake up the fire, nor sweep the room, nor make the beds, --butto sleep on fresh boughs in a wigwam, with the leaves still on thebranches that made the roof! And then to see the deer brought in by thered hunter, and the blood streaming from the arrow-dart! Ah! and the fighttoo! and the scalping! and, perhaps, a woman might creep into the battle, and steal the wounded enemy away of her tribe and scalp him, and bepraised for it! O Seppy, how I hate the thought of the dull life womenlead! A white woman's life is so dull! Thank Heaven, I'm done with it! IfI'm ever to live again, may I be whole Indian, please my Maker!"

After this goodly outburst, Aunt Keziah lay quietly for a few moments, andher skinny claws being clasped together, and her yellow visage grinning, as pious an aspect as was attainable by her harsh and pain-distortedfeatures, Septimius perceived that she was in prayer. And so it proved bywhat followed, for the old woman turned to him with a grim tenderness onher face, and stretched out her hand to be taken in his own. He claspedthe bony talon in both his hands. 

"Seppy, my dear, I feel a great peace, and I don't think there is so verymuch to trouble me in the other world. It won't be all house-work, andkeeping decent, and doing like other people there. I suppose I needn'texpect to ride on a broomstick, --that would be wrong in any kind of aworld, --but there may be woods to wander in, and a pipe to smoke in theair of heaven; trees to hear the wind in, and to smell of, and all suchnatural, happy things; and by and by I shall hope to see you there, Seppy, my darling boy! Come by and by; 't is n't worth your while to liveforever, even if you should find out what's wanting in the drink I'vetaught you. I can see a little way into the next world now, and I see itto be far better than this heavy and wretched old place. You'll die whenyour time comes; won't you, Seppy, my darling?"

"Yes, dear auntie, when my time comes, " said Septimius. "Very likely Ishall want to live no longer by that time. "

"Likely not, " said the old woman. "I'm sure I don't. It is like going tosleep on my mother's breast to die. So good night, dear Seppy!"

"Good night, and God bless you, auntie!" said Septimius, with a gush oftears blinding him, spite of his Indian nature. 

The old woman composed herself, and lay quite still and decorous for ashort time; then, rousing herself a little, "Septimius, " said she, "isthere just a little drop of my drink left? Not that I want to live anylonger, but if I could sip ever so little, I feel as if I should step intothe other world quite cheery, with it warm in my heart, and not feel shyand bashful at going among strangers. "

"Not one drop, auntie. "

"Ah, well, no matter! It was not quite right, that last cup. It had a queertaste. What could you have put into it, Seppy, darling? But no matter, nomatter! It's a precious stuff, if you make it right. Don't forget theherbs, Septimius. Something wrong had certainly got into it. "

These, except for some murmurings, some groanings and unintelligiblewhisperings, were the last utterances of poor Aunt Keziah, who did notlive a great while longer, and at last passed away in a great sigh, like agust of wind among the trees, she having just before stretched out herhand again and grasped that of Septimius; and he sat watching her andgazing at her, wondering and horrified, touched, shocked by death, ofwhich he had so unusual a terror, --and by the death of this creatureespecially, with whom he felt a sympathy that did not exist with any otherperson now living. So long did he sit, holding her hand, that at last hewas conscious that it was growing cold within his own, and that thestiffening fingers clutched him, as if they were disposed to keep theirhold, and not forego the tie that had been so peculiar. 

Then rushing hastily forth, he told the nearest available neighbor, who wasRobert Hagburn's mother; and she summoned some of her gossips, and came tothe house, and took poor Aunt Keziah in charge. They talked of her with nogreat respect, I fear, nor much sorrow, nor sense that the community wouldsuffer any great deprivation in her loss; for, in their view, she was adram-drinking, pipe-smoking, cross-grained old maid, and, as some thought, a witch; and, at any rate, with too much of the Indian blood in her to beof much use; and they hoped that now Rose Garfield would have a pleasanterlife, and Septimius study to be a minister, and all things go well, andthe place be cheerfuller. They found Aunt Keziah's bottle in the cupboard, and tasted and smelt of it. 

"Good West Indjy as ever I tasted, " said Mrs. Hagburn; "and there standsher broken pitcher, on the hearth. Ah, empty! I never could bring my mindto taste it; but now I'm sorry I never did, for I suppose nobody in theworld can make any more of it. "

Septimius, meanwhile, had betaken himself to the hill-top, which was hisplace of refuge on all occasions when the house seemed too stifled tocontain him; and there he walked to and fro, with a certain kind ofcalmness and indifference that he wondered at; for there is hardlyanything in this world so strange as the quiet surface that spreads over aman's mind in his greatest emergencies: so that he deems himself perfectlyquiet, and upbraids himself with not feeling anything, when indeed he ispassion-stirred. As Septimius walked to and fro, he looked at the richcrimson flowers, which seemed to be blooming in greater profusion andluxuriance than ever before. He had made an experiment with these flowers, and he was curious to know whether that experiment had been the cause ofAunt Keziah's death. Not that he felt any remorse therefor, in any case, or believed himself to have committed a crime, having really intended anddesired nothing but good. I suppose such things (and he must be a luckyphysician, methinks, who has no such mischief within his own experience)never weigh with deadly weight on any man's conscience. Something must berisked in the cause of science, and in desperate cases something must berisked for the patient's self. Septimius, much as he loved life, would nothave hesitated to put his own life to the same risk that he had imposed onAunt Keziah; or, if he did hesitate, it would have been only because, ifthe experiment turned out disastrously in his own person, he would not bein a position to make another and more successful trial; whereas, bytrying it on others, the man of science still reserves himself for newefforts, and does not put all the hopes of the world, so far as involvedin his success, on one cast of the die. 

By and by he met Sibyl Dacy, who had ascended the hill, as was usual withher, at sunset, and came towards him, gazing earnestly in his face. 

"They tell me poor Aunt Keziah is no more, " said she. 

"She is dead, " said Septimius. 

"The flower is a very famous medicine, " said the girl, "but everythingdepends on its being applied in the proper way. "

"Do you know the way, then?" asked Septimius. 

"No; you should ask Doctor Portsoaken about that, " said Sibyl. 

Doctor Portsoaken! And so he should consult him. That eminent chemist andscientific man had evidently heard of the recipe, and at all events wouldbe acquainted with the best methods of getting the virtues out of flowersand herbs, some of which, Septimius had read enough to know, were poisonin one phase and shape of preparation, and possessed of richest virtues inothers; their poison, as one may say, serving as a dark and terriblesafeguard, which Providence has set to watch over their preciousness; evenas a dragon, or some wild and fiendish spectre, is set to watch and keephidden gold and heaped-up diamonds. A dragon always waits on everythingthat is very good. And what would deserve the watch and ward of danger ofa dragon, or something more fatal than a dragon, if not this treasure ofwhich Septimius was in quest, and the discovery and possession of whichwould enable him to break down one of the strongest barriers of nature? Itought to be death, he acknowledged it, to attempt such a thing; for howhanged would be life if he should succeed; how necessary it was thatmankind should be defended from such attempts on the general rule on thepart of all but him. How could Death be spared?--then the sire would liveforever, and the heir never come to his inheritance, and so he would atonce hate his own father, from the perception that he would never be outof his way. Then the same class of powerful minds would always rule thestate, and there would never be a change of policy. [_Here several pagesare missing_. --ED. ]

 * * * * *

Through such scenes Septimius sought out the direction that DoctorPortsoaken had given him, and came to the door of a house in the oldenpart of the town. The Boston of those days had very much the aspect ofprovincial towns in England, such as may still be seen there, while ourown city has undergone such wonderful changes that little likeness to whatour ancestors made it can now be found. The streets, crooked and narrow;the houses, many gabled, projecting, with latticed windows and diamondpanes; without sidewalks; with rough pavements. 

Septimius knocked loudly at the door, nor had long to wait before aserving-maid appeared, who seemed to be of English nativity; and in replyto his request for Doctor Portsoaken bade him come in, and led him up astaircase with broad landing-places; then tapped at the door of a room, and was responded to by a gruff voice saying, "Come in!" The woman heldthe door open, and Septimius saw the veritable Doctor Portsoaken in anold, faded morning-gown, and with a nightcap on his head, his German pipein his mouth, and a brandy-bottle, to the best of our belief, on the tableby his side. 

"Come in, come in, " said the gruff doctor, nodding to Septimius. "Iremember you. Come in, man, and tell me your business. "

Septimius did come in, but was so struck by the aspect of Dr. Portsoaken'sapartment, and his gown, that he did not immediately tell his business. Inthe first place, everything looked very dusty and dirty, so that evidentlyno woman had ever been admitted into this sanctity of a place; a fact madeall the more evident by the abundance of spiders, who had spun their websabout the walls and ceiling in the wildest apparent confusion, thoughdoubtless each individual spider knew the cordage which he had lengthenedout of his own miraculous bowels. But it was really strange. They hadfestooned their cordage on whatever was stationary in the room, making asort of gray, dusky tapestry, that waved portentously in the breeze, andflapped, heavy and dismal, each with its spider in the centre of his ownsystem. And what was most marvellous was a spider over the doctor's head;a spider, I think, of some South American breed, with a circumference ofits many legs as big, unless I am misinformed, as a teacup, and with abody in the midst as large as a dollar; giving the spectator horriblequalms as to what would be the consequence if this spider should becrushed, and, at the same time, suggesting the poisonous danger ofsuffering such a monster to live. The monster, however, sat in the midstof the stalwart cordage of his web, right over the doctor's head; and helooked, with all those complicated lines, like the symbol of a conjurer orcrafty politician in the midst of the complexity of his scheme; andSeptimius wondered if he were not the type of Dr. Portsoaken himself, who, fat and bloated as the spider, seemed to be the centre of some darkcontrivance. And could it be that poor Septimius was typified by thefascinated fly, doomed to be entangled by the web?

"Good day to you, " said the gruff doctor, taking his pipe from his mouth. "Here I am, with my brother spiders, in the midst of my web. I told you, you remember, the wonderful efficacy which I had discovered in spiders'webs; and this is my laboratory, where I have hundreds of workmenconcocting my panacea for me. Is it not a lovely sight?"

"A wonderful one, at least, " said Septimius. "That one above your head, themonster, is calculated to give a very favorable idea of your theory. Whata quantity of poison there must be in him!"

"Poison, do you call it?" quoth the grim doctor. "That's entirely as it maybe used. Doubtless his bite would send a man to kingdom come; but, on theother hand, no one need want a better life-line than that fellow's web. Heand I are firm friends, and I believe he would know my enemies byinstinct. But come, sit down, and take a glass of brandy. No? Well, I'lldrink it for you. And how is the old aunt yonder, with her infernalnostrum, the bitterness and nauseousness of which my poor stomach has notyet forgotten?"

"My Aunt Keziah is no more, " said Septimius. 

"No more! Well, I trust in Heaven she has carried her secret with her, "said the doctor. "If anything could comfort you for her loss, it would bethat. But what brings you to Boston?"

"Only a dried flower or two, " said Septimius, producing some specimens ofthe strange growth of the grave. "I want you to tell me about them. "

The naturalist took the flowers in his hand, one of which had the rootappended, and examined them with great minuteness and some surprise; twoor three times looking in Septimius's face with a puzzled and inquiringair; then examined them again. 

"Do you tell me, " said he, "that the plant has been found indigenous inthis country, and in your part of it? And in what locality?"

"Indigenous, so far as I know, " answered Septimius. "As to thelocality, "--he hesitated a little, --"it is on a small hillock, scarcelybigger than a molehill, on the hill-top behind my house. "

The naturalist looked steadfastly at him with red, burning eyes, under hisdeep, impending, shaggy brows; then again at the flower. 

"Flower, do you call it?" said he, after a reëxamination. "This is noflower, though it so closely resembles one, and a beautiful one, --yes, most beautiful. But it is no flower. It is a certain very rare fungus, --sorare as almost to be thought fabulous; and there are the strangestsuperstitions, coming down from ancient times, as to the mode ofproduction. What sort of manure had been put into that hillock? Was itmerely dried leaves, the refuse of the forest, or something else?"

Septimius hesitated a little; but there was no reason why he should notdisclose the truth, --as much of it as Doctor Portsoaken cared to know. 

"The hillock where it grew, " answered he, "was a grave. "

"A grave! Strange! strange!" quoth Doctor Portsoaken. "Now these oldsuperstitions sometimes prove to have a germ of truth in them, which somephilosopher has doubtless long ago, in forgotten ages, discovered and madeknown; but in process of time his learned memory passes away, but thetruth, undiscovered, survives him, and the people get hold of it, and makeit the nucleus of all sorts of folly. So it grew out of a grave! Yes, yes;and probably it would have grown out of any other dead flesh, as well asthat of a human being; a dog would have answered the purpose as well as aman. You must know that the seeds of fungi are scattered so universallyover the world that, only comply with the conditions, and you will producethem everywhere. Prepare the bed it loves, and a mushroom will spring upspontaneously, an excellent food, like manna from heaven. So superstitionsays, kill your deadliest enemy, and plant him, and he will come up in adelicious fungus, which I presume to be this; steep him, or distil him, and he will make an elixir of life for you. I suppose there is somefoolish symbolism or other about the matter; but the fact I affirm to benonsense. Dead flesh under some certain conditions of rain and sunshine, not at present ascertained by science, will produce the fungus, whetherthe manure be friend, or foe, or cattle. "

"And as to its medical efficacy?" asked Septimius. 

"That may be great for aught I know, " said Portsoaken; "but I am contentwith my cobwebs. You may seek it out for yourself. But if the poor fellowlost his life in the supposition that he might be a useful ingredient in arecipe, you are rather an unscrupulous practitioner. "

"The person whose mortal relics fill that grave, " said Septimius, "was noenemy of mine (no private enemy, I mean, though he stood among the enemiesof my country), nor had I anything to gain by his death. I strove to avoidaiming at his life, but he compelled me. "

"Many a chance shot brings down the bird, " said Doctor Portsoaken. "You sayyou had no interest in his death. We shall see that in the end. "

Septimius did not try to follow the conversation among the mysterious hintswith which the doctor chose to involve it; but he now sought to gain someinformation from him as to the mode of preparing the recipe, and whetherhe thought it would be most efficacious as a decoction, or as adistillation. The learned chemist supported most decidedly the latteropinion, and showed Septimius how he might make for himself a simplerapparatus, with no better aids than Aunt Keziah's teakettle, and one ortwo trifling things, which the doctor himself supplied, by which all mightbe done with every necessary scrupulousness. 

"Let me look again at the formula, " said he. "There are a good many minutedirections that appear trifling, but it is not safe to neglect anyminutiae in the preparation of an affair like this; because, as it is allmysterious and unknown ground together, we cannot tell which may be theimportant and efficacious part. For instance, when all else is done, therecipe is to be exposed seven days to the sun at noon. That does not lookvery important, but it may be. Then again, 'Steep it in moonlight duringthe second quarter. ' That's all moonshine, one would think; but there's nosaying. It is singular, with such preciseness, that no distinct directionsare given whether to infuse, decoct, distil, or what other way; but myadvice is to distil. "

"I will do it, " said Septimius, "and not a direction shall be neglected. "

"I shall be curious to know the result, " said Doctor Portsoaken, "and amglad to see the zeal with which you enter into the matter. A very valuablemedicine may be recovered to science through your agency, and you may makeyour fortune by it; though, for my part, I prefer to trust to my cobwebs. This spider, now, is not he a lovely object? See, he is quite capable ofknowledge and affection. "

There seemed, in fact, to be some mode of communication between the doctorand his spider, for on some sign given by the former, imperceptible toSeptimius, the many-legged monster let himself down by a cord, which heextemporized out of his own bowels, and came dangling his huge bulk downbefore his master's face, while the latter lavished many epithets ofendearment upon him, ludicrous, and not without horror, as applied to sucha hideous production of nature. 

"I assure you, " said Dr. Portsoaken, "I run some risk from my intimacy withthis lovely jewel, and if I behave not all the more prudently, yourcountrymen will hang me for a wizard, and annihilate this precious spideras my familiar. There would be a loss to the world; not small in my owncase, but enormous in the case of the spider. Look at him now, and see ifthe mere uninstructed observation does not discover a wonderful value inhim. "

In truth, when looked at closely, the spider really showed that a care andart had been bestowed upon his make, not merely as regards curiosity, butabsolute beauty, that seemed to indicate that he must be a ratherdistinguished creature in the view of Providence; so variegated was hewith a thousand minute spots, spots of color, glorious radiance, and sucha brilliance was attained by many conglomerated brilliancies; and it wasvery strange that all this care was bestowed on a creature that, probably, had never been carefully considered except by the two pair of eyes thatwere now upon it; and that, in spite of its beauty and magnificence, couldonly be looked at with an effort to overcome the mysterious repulsivenessof its presence; for all the time that Septimius looked and admired, hestill hated the thing, and thought it wrong that it was ever born, andwished that it could be annihilated. Whether the spider was conscious ofthe wish, we are unable to say; but certainly Septimius felt as if he werehostile to him, and had a mind to sting him; and, in fact, Dr. Portsoakenseemed of the same opinion. 

"Aha, my friend, " said he, "I would advise you not to come too nearOrontes! He is a lovely beast, it is true; but in a certain recess of thissplendid form of his he keeps a modest supply of a certain potent andpiercing poison, which would produce a wonderful effect on any flesh towhich he chose to apply it. A powerful fellow is Orontes; and he has agreat sense of his own dignity and importance, and will not allow it to beimposed on. "

Septimius moved from the vicinity of the spider, who, in fact, retreated, by climbing up his cord, and ensconced himself in the middle of his web, where he remained waiting for his prey. Septimius wondered whether thedoctor were symbolized by the spider, and was likewise waiting in themiddle of his web for his prey. As he saw no way, however, in which thedoctor could make a profit out of himself, or how he could be victimized, the thought did not much disturb his equanimity. He was about to take hisleave, but the doctor, in a derisive kind of way, bade him sit still, forhe purposed keeping him as a guest, that night, at least. 

"I owe you a dinner, " said he, "and will pay it with a supper andknowledge; and before we part I have certain inquiries to make, of whichyou may not at first see the object, but yet are not quite purposeless. Myfamiliar, up aloft there, has whispered me something about you, and I relygreatly on his intimations. "

Septimius, who was sufficiently common-sensible, and invulnerable tosuperstitious influences on every point except that to which he hadsurrendered himself, was easily prevailed upon to stay; for he found thesingular, charlatanic, mysterious lore of the man curious, and he hadenough of real science to at least make him an object of interest to onewho knew nothing of the matter; and Septimius's acuteness, too, was piquedin trying to make out what manner of man he really was, and how much inhim was genuine science and self-belief, and how much quackery andpretension and conscious empiricism. So he stayed, and supped with thedoctor at a table heaped more bountifully, and with rarer dainties, thanSeptimius had ever before conceived of; and in his simpler cognizance, heretofore, of eating merely to live, he could not but wonder to see a manof thought caring to eat of more than one dish, so that most of the meal, on his part, was spent in seeing the doctor feed and hearing him discourseupon his food. 

"If man lived only to eat, " quoth the doctor, "one life would not suffice, not merely to exhaust the pleasure of it, but even to get the rudiments ofit. "

When this important business was over, the doctor and his guest sat downagain in his laboratory, where the former took care to have his usualcompanion, the black bottle, at his elbow, and filled his pipe, and seemedto feel a certain sullen, genial, fierce, brutal, kindly mood enough, andlooked at Septimius with a sort of friendship, as if he had as lief shakehands with him as knock him down. 

"Now for a talk about business, " said he. 

Septimius thought, however, that the doctor's talk began, at least, at asufficient remoteness from any practical business; for he began toquestion about his remote ancestry, what he knew, or what record had beenpreserved, of the first emigrant from England; whence, from what shire orpart of England, that ancestor had come; whether there were any memorialof any kind remaining of him, any letters or written documents, wills, deeds, or other legal paper; in short, all about him. 

Septimius could not satisfactorily see whether these inquiries were madewith any definite purpose, or from a mere general curiosity to discoverhow a family of early settlement in America might still be linked with theold country; whether there were any tendrils stretching across the gulf ofa hundred and fifty years by which the American branch of the family wasseparated from the trunk of the family tree in England. The doctor partlyexplained this. 

"You must know, " said he, "that the name you bear, Felton, is one formerlyof much eminence and repute in my part of England, and, indeed, veryrecently possessed of wealth and station. I should like to know if you areof that race. "

Septimius answered with such facts and traditions as had come to hisknowledge respecting his family history; a sort of history that is quiteas liable to be mythical, in its early and distant stages, as that ofRome, and, indeed, seldom goes three or four generations back withoutgetting into a mist really impenetrable, though great, gloomy, andmagnificent shapes of men often seem to loom in it, who, if they could bebrought close to the naked eye, would turn out as commonplace as thedescendants who wonder at and admire them. He remembered Aunt Keziah'slegend and said he had reason to believe that his first ancestor came overat a somewhat earlier date than the first Puritan settlers, and dweltamong the Indians where (and here the young man cast down his eyes, havingthe customary American abhorrence for any mixture of blood) he hadintermarried with the daughter of a sagamore, and succeeded to his rule. This might have happened as early as the end of Elizabeth's reign, perhapslater. It was impossible to decide dates on such a matter. There had beena son of this connection, perhaps more than one, but certainly one son, who, on the arrival of the Puritans, was a youth, his father appearing tohave been slain in some outbreak of the tribe, perhaps owing to thejealousy of prominent chiefs at seeing their natural authority abrogatedor absorbed by a man of different race. He slightly alluded to thesupernatural attributes that gathered round this predecessor, but in a wayto imply that he put no faith in them; for Septimius's natural keen senseand perception kept him from betraying his weaknesses to the doctor, bythe same instinctive and subtle caution with which a madman can so wellconceal his infirmity. 

On the arrival of the Puritans, they had found among the Indians a youthpartly of their own blood, able, though imperfectly, to speak theirlanguage, --having, at least, some early recollections of it, --inheriting, also, a share of influence over the tribe on which his father had graftedhim. It was natural that they should pay especial attention to this youth, consider it their duty to give him religious instruction in the faith ofhis fathers, and try to use him as a means of influencing his tribe. Theydid so, but did not succeed in swaying the tribe by his means, theirsuccess having been limited to winning the half-Indian from the wild waysof his mother's people, into a certain partial, but decent accommodationto those of the English. A tendency to civilization was brought out in hischaracter by their rigid training; at least, his savage wildness wasbroken. He built a house among them, with a good deal of the wigwam, nodoubt, in its style of architecture, but still a permanent house, nearwhich he established a corn-field, a pumpkin-garden, a melon-patch, andbecame farmer enough to be entitled to ask the hand of a Puritan maiden. There he spent his life, with some few instances of temporary relapse intosavage wildness, when he fished in the river Musquehannah, or in Walden, or strayed in the woods, when he should have been planting or hoeing; but, on the whole, the race had been redeemed from barbarism in his person, andin the succeeding generations had been tamed more and more. The secondgeneration had been distinguished in the Indian wars of the provinces, andthen intermarried with the stock of a distinguished Puritan divine, bywhich means Septimius could reckon great and learned men, scholars of oldCambridge, among his ancestry on one side, while on the other it ran up tothe early emigrants, who seemed to have been remarkable men, and to thatstrange wild lineage of Indian chiefs, whose blood was like that ofpersons not quite human, intermixed with civilized blood. 

"I wonder, " said the doctor, musingly, "whether there are really nodocuments to ascertain the epoch at which that old first emigrant cameover, and whence he came, and precisely from what English family. Oftenthe last heir of some respectable name dies in England, and we say thatthe family is extinct; whereas, very possibly, it may be abundantlyflourishing in the New World, revived by the rich infusion of new blood ina new soil, instead of growing feebler, heavier, stupider, each year bysticking to an old soil, intermarrying over and over again with the samerespectable families, till it has made common stock of all their vices, weaknesses, madnesses. Have you no documents, I say, no muniment deed?"

"None, " said Septimius. 

"No old furniture, desks, trunks, chests, cabinets?"

"You must remember, " said Septimius, "that my Indian ancestor was not verylikely to have brought such things out of the forest with him. A wanderingIndian does not carry a chest of papers with him. I do remember, in mychildhood, a little old iron-bound chest, or coffer, of which the key waslost, and which my Aunt Keziah used to say came down from hergreat-great-grandfather. I don't know what has become of it, and my poorold aunt kept it among her own treasures. "

"Well, my friend, do you hunt up that old coffer, and, just as a matter ofcuriosity, let me see the contents. "

"I have other things to do, " said Septimius. 

"Perhaps so, " quoth the doctor, "but no other, as it may turn out, of quiteso much importance as this. I'll tell you fairly: the heir of a greatEnglish house is lately dead, and the estate lies open to anywell-sustained, perhaps to any plausible, claimant. If it should appearfrom the records of that family, as I have some reason to suppose, that amember of it, who would now represent the older branch, disappearedmysteriously and unaccountably, at a date corresponding with what might beascertained as that of your ancestor's first appearance in this country;if any reasonable proof can be brought forward, on the part of therepresentatives of that white sagamore, that wizard pow-wow, or howeveryou call him, that he was the disappearing Englishman, why, a good case ismade out. Do you feel no interest in such a prospect?"

"Very little, I confess, " said Septimius. 

"Very little!" said the grim doctor, impatiently. "Do not you see that, ifyou make good your claim, you establish for yourself a position among theEnglish aristocracy, and succeed to a noble English estate, an ancienthall, where your forefathers have dwelt since the Conqueror; splendidgardens, hereditary woods and parks, to which anything America can show isdespicable, --all thoroughly cultivated and adorned, with the care andingenuity of centuries; and an income, a month of which would be greaterwealth than any of your American ancestors, raking and scraping for hislifetime, has ever got together, as the accumulated result of the toil andpenury by which he has sacrificed body and soul?"

"That strain of Indian blood is in me yet, " said Septimius, "and it makesme despise, --no, not despise; for I can see their desirableness for otherpeople, --but it makes me reject for myself what you think so valuable. Ido not care for these common aims. I have ambition, but it is for prizessuch as other men cannot gain, and do not think of aspiring after. I couldnot live in the habits of English life, as I conceive it to be, and wouldnot, for my part, be burdened with the great estate you speak of. It mightanswer my purpose for a time. It would suit me well enough to try thatmode of life, as well as a hundred others, but only for a time. It is ofno permanent importance. "

"I'll tell you what it is, young man, " said the doctor, testily, "you havesomething in your brain that makes you talk very foolishly; and I havepartly a suspicion what it is, --only I can't think that a fellow who isreally gifted with respectable sense, in other directions, should be sucha confounded idiot in this. "

Septimius blushed, but held his peace, and the conversation languishedafter this; the doctor grimly smoking his pipe, and by no means increasingthe milkiness of his mood by frequent applications to the black bottle, until Septimius intimated that he would like to go to bed. The old womanwas summoned, and ushered him to his chamber. 

At breakfast, the doctor partially renewed the subject which he seemed toconsider most important in yesterday's conversation. 

"My young friend, " said he, "I advise you to look in cellar and garret, orwherever you consider the most likely place, for that iron-bound coffer. There may be nothing in it; it may be full of musty love-letters, or oldsermons, or receipted bills of a hundred years ago; but it may containwhat will be worth to you an estate of five thousand pounds a year. It isa pity the old woman with the damnable decoction is gone off. Look it up, I say. "

"Well, well, " said Septimius, abstractedly, "when I can find time. "

So saying, he took his leave, and retraced his way back to his home. He hadnot seemed like himself during the time that elapsed since he left it, andit appeared an infinite space that he had lived through and travelledover, and he fancied it hardly possible that he could ever get back again. But now, with every step that he took, he found himself getting miserablyback into the old enchanted land. The mist rose up about him, the palemist-bow of ghostly promise curved before him; and he trod back again, poor boy, out of the clime of real effort, into the land of his dreams andshadowy enterprise. 

"How was it, " said he, "that I can have been so untrue to my convictions?Whence came that dark and dull despair that weighed upon me? Why did I letthe mocking mood which I was conscious of in that brutal, brandy-burntsceptic have such an influence on me? Let him guzzle! He shall not temptme from my pursuit, with his lure of an estate and name among those heavyEnglish beef-eaters of whom he is a brother. My destiny is one which kingsmight envy, and strive in vain to buy with principalities and kingdoms. "

So he trod on air almost, in the latter parts of his journey, and insteadof being wearied, grew more airy with the latter miles that brought him tohis wayside home. 

So now Septimius sat down and began in earnest his endeavors andexperiments to prepare the medicine, according to the mysterious terms ofthe recipe. It seemed not possible to do it, so many rebuffs anddisappointments did he meet with. No effort would produce a combinationanswering to the description of the recipe, which propounded a brilliant, gold-colored liquid, clear as the air itself, with a certain fragrancewhich was peculiar to it, and also, what was the more individual test ofthe correctness of the mixture, a certain coldness of the feeling, achillness which was described as peculiarly refreshing and invigorating. With all his trials, he produced nothing but turbid results, cloudedgenerally, or lacking something in color, and never that fragrance, andnever that coldness which was to be the test of truth. He studied all thebooks of chemistry which at that period were attainable, --a period when, in the world, it was a science far unlike what it has since become; andwhen Septimius had no instruction in this country, nor could obtain anybeyond the dark, mysterious charlatanic communications of DoctorPortsoaken. So that, in fact, he seemed to be discovering for himself thescience through which he was to work. He seemed to do everything that wasstated in the recipe, and yet no results came from it; the liquid that heproduced was nauseous to the smell, --to taste it he had a horriblerepugnance, turbid, nasty, reminding him in most respects of poor AuntKeziah's elixir; and it was a body without a soul, and that body dead. Andso it went on; and the poor, half-maddened Septimius began to think thathis immortal life was preserved by the mere effort of seeking for it, butwas to be spent in the quest, and was therefore to be made an eternity ofabortive misery. He pored over the document that had so possessed him, turning its crabbed meanings every way, trying to get out of it some newlight, often tempted to fling it into the fire which he kept under hisretort, and let the whole thing go; but then again, soon rising out ofthat black depth of despair, into a determination to do what he had solong striven for. With such intense action of mind as he brought to bearon this paper, it is wonderful that it was not spiritually distilled; thatits essence did not arise, purified from all alloy of falsehood, from allturbidness of obscurity and ambiguity, and form a pure essence of truthand invigorating motive, if of any it were capable. In this interval, Septimius is said by tradition to have found out many wonderful secretsthat were almost beyond the scope of science. It was said that old AuntKeziah used to come with a coal of fire from unknown furnaces, to lighthis distilling apparatus; it was said, too, that the ghost of the oldlord, whose ingenuity had propounded this puzzle for his descendants, usedto come at midnight and strive to explain to him this manuscript; that theBlack Man, too, met him on the hill-top, and promised him an immediaterelease from his difficulties, provided he would kneel down and worshiphim, and sign his name in his book, an old, iron-clasped, much-wornvolume, which he produced from his ample pockets, and showed him in it thenames of many a man whose name has become historic, and above whose asheskept watch an inscription testifying to his virtues and devotion, --oldautographs, --for the Black Man was the original autograph collector. 

But these, no doubt, were foolish stories, conceived andpropagated inchimney-corners, while yet there were chimney-corners and firesides, andsmoky flues. There wasno truth in such things, I am sure; the Black Manhad changedhis tactics, and knew better than to lure the human soul thusto come to him with his musty autograph-book. So Septimiusfought with hisdifficulty by himself, as many a beginner inscience has done before him;and to his efforts in this way arepopularly attributed many herb-drinks, and some kinds ofspruce-beer, and nostrums used for rheumatism, sorethroat, and typhus fever; but I rather think they all came from AuntKeziah;or perhaps, like jokes to Joe Miller, all sorts ofquack medicines, flocking at large through the community, areassigned to him or her. Thepeople have a little mistaken thecharacter and purpose of poor Septimius, and remember him as aquack doctor, instead of a seeker for a secret, notthe lesssublime and elevating because it happened to be unattainable. 

I know not through what medium or by what means, but it got noised abroadthat Septimius was engaged in some mysterious work; and, indeed, hisseclusion, his absorption, his indifference to all that was going on inthat weary time of war, looked strange enough to indicate that it must besome most important business that engrossed him. On the few occasions whenhe came out from his immediate haunts into the village, he had a strange, owl-like appearance, uncombed, unbrushed, his hair long and tangled; hisface, they said, darkened with smoke; his cheeks pale; the indentation ofhis brow deeper than ever before; an earnest, haggard, sulking look; andso he went hastily along the village street, feeling as if all eyes mightfind out what he had in his mind from his appearance; taking by-ways wherethey were to be found, going long distances through woods and fields, rather than short ones where the way lay through the frequented haunts ofmen. For he shunned the glances of his fellow-men, probably because he hadlearnt to consider them not as fellows, because he was seeking to withdrawhimself from the common bond and destiny, --because he felt, too, that onthat account his fellow-men would consider him as a traitor, an enemy, onewho had deserted their cause, and tried to withdraw his feeble shoulderfrom under that great burden of death which is imposed on all men to bear, and which, if one could escape, each other would feel his loadpropertionably heavier. With these beings of a moment he had no longer anycommon cause; they must go their separate ways, yet apparently thesame, --they on the broad, dusty, beaten path, that seemed always full, butfrom which continually they so strangely vanished into invisibility, noone knowing, nor long inquiring, what had become of them; he on his lonelypath, where he should tread secure, with no trouble but the loneliness, which would be none to him. For a little while he would seem to keep themcompany, but soon they would all drop away, the minister, his accustomedtowns-people, Robert Hagburn, Rose, Sibyl Dacy, --all leaving him inblessed unknownness to adopt new temporary relations, and take a newcourse. 

Sometimes, however, the prospect a little chilled him. Could he give themall up, --the sweet sister; the friend of his childhood; the graveinstructor of his youth; the homely, life-known faces? Yes; there weresuch rich possibilities in the future: for he would seek out the noblestminds, the deepest hearts in every age, and be the friend of human time. Only it might be sweet to have one unchangeable companion; for, unless hestrung the pearls and diamonds of life upon one unbroken affection, hesometimes thought that his life would have nothing to give it unity andidentity; and so the longest life would be but an aggregate of insulatedfragments, which would have no relation to one another. And so it wouldnot be one life, but many unconnected ones. Unless he could look into thesame eyes, through the mornings of future time, opening and blessing himwith the fresh gleam of love and joy; unless the same sweet voice couldmelt his thoughts together; unless some sympathy of a life side by sidewith his could knit them into one; looking back upon the same things, looking forward to the same; the long, thin thread of an individual life, stretching onward and onward, would cease to be visible, cease to be felt, cease, by and by, to have any real bigness in proportion to its length, and so be virtually non-existent, except in the mere inconsiderable Now. If a group of chosen friends, chosen out of all the world for theiradaptedness, could go on in endless life together, keeping themselvesmutually warm on the high, desolate way, then none of them need ever sighto be comforted in the pitiable snugness of the grave. If one especialsoul might be his companion, then how complete the fence of mutual arms, the warmth of close-pressing breast to breast! Might there be one! O SibylDacy!

Perhaps it could not be. Who but himself could undergo that great trial, and hardship, and self-denial, and firm purpose, never wavering, neversinking for a moment, keeping his grasp on life like one who holds up bymain force a sinking and drowning friend?--how could a woman do it! Hemust then give up the thought. There was a choice, --friendship, and thelove of woman, --the long life of immortality. There was something heroicand ennobling in choosing the latter. And so he walked with the mysteriousgirl on the hill-top, and sat down beside her on the grave, which stillceased not to redden, portentously beautiful, with that unnaturalflower, --and they talked together; and Septimius looked on her weirdbeauty, and often said to himself, "This, too, will pass away; she is notcapable of what I am; she is a woman. It must be a manly and courageousand forcible spirit, vastly rich in all three particulars, that hasstrength enough to live! Ah, is it surely so? There is such a darksympathy between us, she knows me so well, she touches my inmost so atunawares, that I could almost think I had a companion here. Perhaps not sosoon. At the end of centuries I might wed one; not now. "

But once he said to Sibyl Dacy, "Ah, how sweet it would be--sweet for me, at least--if this intercourse might last forever!"

"That is an awful idea that you present, " said Sibyl, with a hardlyperceptible, involuntary shudder; "always on this hill-top, always passingand repassing this little hillock; always smelling these flowers! I alwayslooking at this deep chasm in your brow; you always seeing my bloodlesscheek!--doing this till these trees crumble away, till perhaps a newforest grew up wherever this white race had planted, and a race of savagesagain possess the soil. I should not like it. My mission here is but for ashort time, and will soon be accomplished, and then I go. "

"You do not rightly estimate the way in which the long time might bespent, " said Septimius. "We would find out a thousand uses of this world, uses and enjoyments which now men never dream of, because the world isjust held to their mouths, and then snatched away again, before they havetime hardly to taste it, instead of becoming acquainted with thedeliciousness of this great world-fruit. But you speak of a mission, andas if you were now in performance of it. Will you not tell me what itis?"

"No, " said Sibyl Dacy, smiling on him. "But one day you shall know what itis, --none sooner nor better than you, --so much I promise you. "

"Are we friends?" asked Septimius, somewhat puzzled by her look. 

"We have an intimate relation to one another, " replied Sibyl. 

"And what is it?" demanded Septimius. 

"That will appear hereafter, " answered Sibyl, again smiling on him. 

He knew not what to make of this, nor whether to be exalted or depressed;but, at all events, there seemed to be an accordance, a striking together, a mutual touch of their two natures, as if, somehow or other, they wereperforming the same part of solemn music; so that he felt his soul thrill, and at the same time shudder. Some sort of sympathy there surely was, butof what nature he could not tell; though often he was impelled to askhimself the same question he asked Sibyl, "Are we friends?" because of asudden shock and repulsion that came between them, and passed away in amoment; and there would be Sibyl, smiling askance on him. 

And then he toiled away again at his chemical pursuits; tried to minglethings harmoniously that apparently were not born to be mingled;discovering a science for himself, and mixing it up with absurdities thatother chemists had long ago flung aside; but still there would be thatturbid aspect, still that lack of fragrance, still that want of thepeculiar temperature, that was announced as the test of the matter. Overand over again he set the crystal vase in the sun, and let it stay therethe appointed time, hoping that it would digest in such a manner as tobring about the desired result. 

One day, as it happened, his eyes fell upon the silver key which he hadtaken from the breast of the dead young man, and he thought within himselfthat this might have something to do with the seemingly unattainablesuccess of his pursuit. He remembered, for the first time, the grimdoctor's emphatic injunction to search for the little iron-bound box ofwhich he had spoken, and which had come down with such legends attached toit; as, for instance, that it held the Devil's bond with hisgreat-great-grandfather, now cancelled by the surrender of the latter'ssoul; that it held the golden key of Paradise; that it was full of oldgold, or of the dry leaves of a hundred years ago; that it had a familiarfiend in it, who would be exorcised by the turning of the lock, but wouldotherwise remain a prisoner till the solid oak of the box mouldered, orthe iron rusted away; so that between fear and the loss of the key, thiscurious old box had remained unopened, till itself was lost. 

But now Septimius, putting together what Aunt Keziah had said in her dyingmoments, and what Doctor Portsoaken had insisted upon, suddenly came tothe conclusion that the possession of the old iron box might be of thegreatest importance to him. So he set himself at once to think where hehad last seen it. Aunt Keziah, of course, had put it away in some safeplace or other, either in cellar or garret, no doubt; so Septimius, in theintervals of his other occupations, devoted several days to the search;and not to weary the reader with the particulars of the quest for an oldbox, suffice it to say that he at last found it, amongst various otherantique rubbish, in a corner of the garret. 

It was a very rusty old thing, not more than a foot in length, and half asmuch in height and breadth; but most ponderously iron-bound, with bars, and corners, and all sorts of fortification; looking very much like anancient alms-box, such as are to be seen in the older rural churches ofEngland, and which seem to intimate great distrust of those to whom thefunds are committed. Indeed, there might be a shrewd suspicion that someancient church beadle among Septimius's forefathers, when emigrating fromEngland, had taken the opportunity of bringing the poor-box along withhim. On looking close, too, there were rude embellishments on the lid andsides of the box in long-rusted steel, designs such as the Middle Ageswere rich in; a representation of Adam and Eve, or of Satan and a soul, nobody could tell which; but, at any rate, an illustration of great valueand interest. Septimius looked at this ugly, rusty, ponderous old box, soworn and battered with time, and recollected with a scornful smile thelegends of which it was the object; all of which he despised anddiscredited, just as much as he did that story in the "Arabian Nights, "where a demon comes out of a copper vase, in a cloud of smoke that coversthe sea-shore; for he was singularly invulnerable to all modes ofsuperstition, all nonsense, except his own. But that one mode was ever infull force and operation with him. He felt strongly convinced that insidethe old box was something that appertained to his destiny; the key that hehad taken from the dead man's breast, had that come down through time, andacross the sea, and had a man died to bring and deliver it to him, merelyfor nothing? It could not be. 

He looked at the old, rusty, elaborated lock of the little receptacle. Itwas much flourished about with what was once polished steel; andcertainly, when thus polished, and the steel bright with which it washooped, defended, and inlaid, it must have been a thing fit to appear inany cabinet; though now the oak was worm-eaten as an old coffin, and therust of the iron came off red on Septimius's fingers, after he had beenfumbling at it. He looked at the curious old silver key, too, and fanciedthat he discovered in its elaborate handle some likeness to the ornamentsabout the box; at any rate, this he determined was the key of fate, and hewas just applying it to the lock when somebody tapped familiarly at thedoor, having opened the outer one, and stepped in with a manly stride. Septimius, inwardly blaspheming, as secluded men are apt to do when anyinterruption comes, and especially when it comes at some critical momentof projection, left the box as yet unbroached, and said, "Come in. "

The door opened, and Robert Hagburn entered; looking so tall and stately, that Septimius hardly knew him for the youth with whom he had grown upfamiliarly. He had on the Revolutionary dress of buff and blue, withdecorations that to the initiated eye denoted him an officer, andcertainly there was a kind of authority in his look and manner, indicatingthat heavy responsibilities, critical moments, had educated him, andturned the ploughboy into a man. 

"Is it you?" exclaimed Septimius. "I scarcely knew you. How war has alteredyou!"

"And I may say, Is it you? for you are much altered likewise, my oldfriend. Study wears upon you terribly. You will be an old man, at thisrate, before you know you are a young one. You will kill yourself, as sureas a gun!"

"Do you think so?" said Septimius, rather startled, for the queer absurdityof the position struck him, if he should so exhaust and wear himself as todie, just at the moment when he should have found out the secret ofeverlasting life. "But though I look pale, I am very vigorous. Judgingfrom that scar, slanting down from your temple, you have been nearer deaththan you now think me, though in another way. "

"Yes, " said Robert Hagburn; "but in hot blood, and for a good cause, whocares for death? And yet I love life; none better, while it lasts, and Ilove it in all its looks and turns and surprises, --there is so much to begot out of it, in spite of all that people say. Youth is sweet, with itsfiery enterprise, and I suppose mature manhood will be just as much so, though in a calmer way, and age, quieter still, will have its ownmerits, --the thing is only to do with life what we ought, and what issuited to each of its stages; do all, enjoy all, --and I suppose these tworules amount to the same thing. Only catch real earnest hold of life, notplay with it, and not defer one part of it for the sake of another, theneach part of life will do for us what was intended. People talk of thehardships of military service, of the miseries that we undergo fightingfor our country. I have undergone my share, I believe, --hard toil in thewilderness, hunger, extreme weariness, pinching cold, the torture of awound, peril of death; and really I have been as happy through it as everI was at my mother's cosey fireside of a winter's evening. If I had died, I doubt not my last moments would have been happy. There is no use oflife, but just to find out what is fit for us to do; and, doing it, itseems to be little matter whether we live or die in it. God does not wantour work, but only our willingness to work; at least, the last seems toanswer all his purposes. "

"This is a comfortable philosophy of yours, " said Septimius, rathercontemptuously, and yet enviously. "Where did you get it, Robert?"

"Where? Nowhere; it came to me on the march; and though I can't say that Ithought it when the bullets pattered into the snow about me, in thosenarrow streets of Quebec, yet, I suppose, it was in my mind then; for, asI tell you, I was very cheerful and contented. And you, Septimius? I neversaw such a discontented, unhappy-looking fellow as you are. You have had aharder time in peace than I in war. You have not found what you seek, whatever that may be. Take my advice. Give yourself to the next work thatcomes to hand. The war offers place to all of us; we ought to bethankful, --the most joyous of all the generations before or afterus, --since Providence gives us such good work to live for, or such a goodopportunity to die. It is worth living for, just to have the chance to dieso well as a man may in these days. Come, be a soldier. Be a chaplain, since your education lies that way; and you will find that nobody in peaceprays so well as we do, we soldiers; and you shall not be debarred fromfighting, too; if war is holy work, a priest may lawfully do it, as wellas pray for it. Come with us, my old friend Septimius, be my comrade, and, whether you live or die, you will thank me for getting you out of theyellow forlornness in which you go on, neither living nor dying. "

Septimius looked at Robert Hagburn in surprise; so much was he altered andimproved by this brief experience of war, adventure, responsibility, whichhe had passed through. Not less than the effect produced on his loutish, rustic air and deportment, developing his figure, seeming to make himtaller, setting free the manly graces that lurked within his awkwardframe, --not less was the effect on his mind and moral nature, givingfreedom of ideas, simple perception of great thoughts, a free naturalchivalry; so that the knight, the Homeric warrior, the hero, seemed to behere, or possible to be here, in the young New England rustic; and allthat history has given, and hearts throbbed and sighed and gloried over, of patriotism and heroic feeling and action, might be repeated, perhaps, in the life and death of this familiar friend and playmate of his, whom hehad valued not over highly, --Robert Hagburn. He had merely followed outhis natural heart, boldly and singly, --doing the first good thing thatcame to hand, --and here was a hero. 

"You almost make me envy you, Robert, " said he, sighing. 

"Then why not come with me?" asked Robert. 

"Because I have another destiny, " said Septimius. 

"Well, you are mistaken; be sure of that, " said Robert. "This is not ageneration for study, and the making of books; that may come by and by. This great fight has need of all men to carry it on, in one way oranother; and no man will do well, even for himself, who tries to avoid hisshare in it. But I have said my say. And now, Septimius, the war takesmuch of a man, but it does not take him all, and what it leaves is all themore full of life and health thereby. I have something to say to you aboutthis. "

"Say it then, Robert, " said Septimius, who, having got over the firstexcitement of the interview, and the sort of exhilaration produced by thehealthful glow of Robert's spirit, began secretly to wish that it mightclose, and to be permitted to return to his solitary thoughts again. "Whatcan I do for you?"

"Why, nothing, " said Robert, looking rather confused, "since all issettled. The fact is, my old friend, as perhaps you have seen, I have verylong had an eye upon your sister Rose; yes, from the time we went togetherto the old school-house, where she now teaches children like what we werethen. The war took me away, and in good time, for I doubt if Rose wouldever have cared enough for me to be my wife, if I had stayed at home, acountry lout, as I was getting to be, in shirt-sleeves and bare feet. Butnow, you see, I have come back, and this whole great war, to her woman'sheart, is represented in me, and makes me heroic, so to speak, andstrange, and yet her old familiar lover. So I found her heart tenderer forme than it was; and, in short, Rose has consented to be my wife, and wemean to be married in a week; my furlough permits little delay. "

"You surprise me, " said Septimius, who, immersed in his own pursuits, hadtaken no notice of the growing affection between Robert and his sister. "Do you think it well to snatch this little lull that is allowed you inthe wild striving of war to try to make a peaceful home? Shall you like tobe summoned from it soon? Shall you be as cheerful among dangersafterwards, when one sword may cut down two happinesses?"

"There is something in what you say, and I have thought of it, " saidRobert, sighing. "But I can't tell how it is; but there is something inthis uncertainty, this peril, this cloud before us, that makes it sweeterto love and to be loved than amid all seeming quiet and serenity. Really, I think, if there were to be no death, the beauty of life would be alltame. So we take our chance, or our dispensation of Providence, and aregoing to love, and to be married, just as confidently as if we were sureof living forever. "

"Well, old fellow, " said Septimius, with more cordiality and outgush ofheart than he had felt for a long while, "there is no man whom I should behappier to call brother. Take Rose, and all happiness along with her. Sheis a good girl, and not in the least like me. May you live out yourthreescore years and ten, and every one of them be happy. "

Little more passed, and Robert Hagburn took his leave with a hearty shakeof Septimius's hand, too conscious of his own happiness to be quitesensible how much the latter was self-involved, strange, anxious, separated from healthy life and interests; and Septimius, as soon asRobert had disappeared, locked the door behind him, and proceeded at onceto apply the silver key to the lock of the old strong box. 

The lock resisted somewhat, being rusty, as might well be supposed after somany years since it was opened; but it finally allowed the key to turn, and Septimius, with a good deal of flutter at his heart, opened the lid. The interior had a very different aspect from that of the exterior; for, whereas the latter looked so old, this, having been kept from the air, looked about as new as when shut up from light and air two centuries ago, less or more. It was lined with ivory, beautifully carved in figures, according to the art which the mediæval people possessed in greatperfection; and probably the box had been a lady's jewel-casket formerly, and had glowed with rich lustre and bright colors at former openings. Butnow there was nothing in it of that kind, --nothing in keeping with thosefigures carved in the ivory representing some mythical subjects, --nothingbut some papers in the bottom of the box written over in an ancient hand, which Septimius at once fancied that he recognized as that of themanuscript and recipe which he had found on the breast of the youngsoldier. He eagerly seized them, but was infinitely disappointed to findthat they did not seem to refer at all to the subjects treated by theformer, but related to pedigrees and genealogies, and were in reference toan English family and some member of it who, two centuries before, hadcrossed the sea to America, and who, in this way, had sought to preservehis connection with his native stock, so as to be able, perhaps, to proveit for himself or his descendants; and there was reference to documentsand records in England in confirmation of the genealogy. Septimius sawthat this paper had been drawn up by an ancestor of his own, theunfortunate man who had been hanged for witchcraft; but so earnest hadbeen his expectation of something different, that he flung the old papersdown with bitter indifference. 

Then again he snatched them up, and contemptuously read them, --those proofsof descent through generations of esquires and knights, who had beenrenowned in war; and there seemed, too, to be running through the family acertain tendency to letters, for three were designated as of the collegesof Oxford or Cambridge; and against one there was the note, "he that soldhimself to Sathan;" and another seemed to have been a follower ofWickliffe; and they had murdered kings, and been beheaded, and banished, and what not; so that the age-long life of this ancient family had notbeen after all a happy or very prosperous one, though they had kept theirestate, in one or another descendant, since the Conquest. It was notwholly without interest that Septimius saw that this ancient descent, thisconnection with noble families, and intermarriages with names, some ofwhich he recognized as known in English history, all referred to his ownfamily, and seemed to centre in himself, the last of a poverty-strickenline, which had dwindled down into obscurity, and into rustic labor andhumble toil, reviving in him a little; yet how little, unless he fulfilledhis strange purpose. Was it not better worth his while to take thisEnglish position here so strangely offered him? He had apparently slainunwittingly the only person who could have contested his rights, --theyoung man who had so strangely brought him the hope of unlimited life atthe same time that he was making room for him among his forefathers. Whata change in his lot would have been here, for there seemed to be somepretensions to a title, too, from a barony which was floating about andoccasionally moving out of abeyancy!

"Perhaps, " said Septimius to himself, "I may hereafter think it worth whileto assert my claim to these possessions, to this position amid an ancientaristocracy, and try that mode of life for one generation. Yet there issomething in my destiny incompatible, of course, with the continuedpossession of an estate. I must be, of necessity, a wanderer on the faceof the earth, changing place at short intervals, disappearing suddenly andentirely; else the foolish, short-lived multitude and mob of mortals willbe enraged with one who seems their brother, yet whose countenance willnever be furrowed with his age, nor his knees totter, nor his force beabated; their little brevity will be rebuked by his age-long endurance, above whom the oaken roof-tree of a thousand years would crumble, whilestill he would be hale and strong. So that this house, or any other, wouldbe but a resting-place of a day, and then I must away into anotherobscurity. "

With almost a regret, he continued to look over the documents until hereached one of the persons recorded in the line of pedigree, --a worthy, apparently, of the reign of Elizabeth, to whom was attributed a title ofDoctor in Utriusque Juris; and against his name was a verse of Latinwritten, for what purpose Septimius knew not, for, on reading it, itappeared to have no discoverable appropriateness; but suddenly heremembered the blotted and imperfect hieroglyphical passage in the recipe. He thought an instant, and was convinced this was the full expression andoutwriting of that crabbed little mystery; and that here was part of thatsecret writing for which the Age of Elizabeth was so famous and sodexterous. His mind had a flash of light upon it, and from that moment hewas enabled to read not only the recipe but the rules, and all the rest ofthat mysterious document, in a way which he had never thought of before;to discern that it was not to be taken literally and simply, but had ahidden process involved in it that made the whole thing infinitely deeperthan he had hitherto deemed it to be. His brain reeled, he seemed to havetaken a draught of some liquor that opened infinite depths before him, hecould scarcely refrain from giving a shout of triumphant exultation, thehouse could not contain him, he rushed up to his hill-top, and there, after walking swiftly to and fro, at length flung himself on the littlehillock, and burst forth, as if addressing him who slept beneath. 

"O brother, O friend!" said he, "I thank thee for thy matchless beneficenceto me; for all which I rewarded thee with this little spot on my hill-top. Thou wast very good, very kind. It would not have been well for thee, ayouth of fiery joys and passions, loving to laugh, loving the lightnessand sparkling brilliancy of life, to take this boon to thyself; for, Obrother! I see, I see, it requires a strong spirit, capable of much lonelyendurance, able to be sufficient to itself, loving not too much, dependenton no sweet ties of affection, to be capable of the mighty trial which nowdevolves on me. I thank thee, O kinsman! Yet thou, I feel, hast the betterpart, who didst so soon lie down to rest, who hast done forever with thistroublesome world, which it is mine to contemplate from age to age, and tosum up the meaning of it. Thou art disporting thyself in other spheres. Ienjoy the high, severe, fearful office of living here, and of being theminister of Providence from one age to many successive ones. "

In this manner he raved, as never before, in a strain of exaltedenthusiasm, securely treading on air, and sometimes stopping to shoutaloud, and feeling as if he should burst if he did not do so; and hisvoice came back to him again from the low hills on the other side of thebroad, level valley, and out of the woods afar, mocking him; or as if itwere airy spirits, that knew how it was all to be, confirming his cry, saying "It shall be so, " "Thou hast found it at last, " "Thou artimmortal. " And it seemed as if Nature were inclined to celebrate histriumph over herself; for above the woods that crowned the hill to thenorthward, there were shoots and streams of radiance, a white, a red, amany-colored lustre, blazing up high towards the zenith, dancing up, flitting down, dancing up again; so that it seemed as if spirits werekeeping a revel there. The leaves of the trees on the hill-side, allexcept the evergreens, had now mostly fallen with the autumn; so thatSeptimius was seen by the few passers-by, in the decline of the afternoon, passing to and fro along his path, wildly gesticulating; and heard toshout so that the echoes came from all directions to answer him. Afternightfall, too, in the harvest moonlight, a shadow was still seen passingthere, waving its arms in shadowy triumph; so, the next day, there werevarious goodly stories afloat and astir, coming out of successive mouths, more wondrous at each birth; the simplest form of the story being, thatSeptimius Felton had at last gone raving mad on the hill-top that he wasso fond of haunting; and those who listened to his shrieks said that hewas calling to the Devil; and some said that by certain exorcisms he hadcaused the appearance of a battle in the air, charging squadrons, cannon-flashes, champions encountering; all of which foreboded some realbattle to be fought with the enemies of the country; and as the battle ofMonmouth chanced to occur, either the very next day, or about that time, this was supposed to be either caused or foretold by Septimius'seccentricities; and as the battle was not very favorable to our arms, thepatriotism of Septimius suffered much in popular estimation. 

But he knew nothing, thought nothing, cared nothing about his country, orhis country's battles; he was as sane as he had been for a year past, andwas wise enough, though merely by instinct, to throw off some of hissuperfluous excitement by these wild gestures, with wild shouts, andrestless activity; and when he had partly accomplished this he returned tothe house, and, late as it was, kindled his fire, and began anew theprocesses of chemistry, now enlightened by the late teachings. A new agentseemed to him to mix itself up with his toil and to forward his purpose;something helped him along; everything became facile to his manipulation, clear to his thought. In this way he spent the night, and when at sunrisehe let in the eastern light upon his study, the thing was done. 

Septimius had achieved it. That is to say, he had succeeded in amalgamatinghis materials so that they acted upon one another, and in accordance; andhad produced a result that had a subsistence in itself, and a right to be;a something potent and substantial; each ingredient contributing its partto form a new essence, which was as real and individual as anything it wasformed from. But in order to perfect it, there was necessity that thepowers of nature should act quietly upon it through a month of sunshine;that the moon, too, should have its part in the production; and so he mustwait patiently for this. Wait! surely he would! Had he not time forwaiting? Were he to wait till old age, it would not be too much; for allfuture time would have it in charge to repay him. 

So he poured the inestimable liquor into a glass vase, well secured fromthe air, and placed it in the sunshine, shifting it from one sunny windowto another, in order that it might ripen; moving it gently lest he shoulddisturb the living spirit that he knew to be in it. And he watched it fromday to day, watched the reflections in it, watched its lustre, whichseemed to him to grow greater day by day, as if it imbibed the sunlightinto it. Never was there anything so bright as this. It changed its hue, too, gradually, being now a rich purple, now a crimson, now a violet, nowa blue; going through all these prismatic colors without losing any of itsbrilliance, and never was there such a hue as the sunlight took in fallingthrough it and resting on his floor. And strange and beautiful it was, too, to look through this medium at the outer world, and see how it wasglorified and made anew, and did not look like the same world, althoughthere were all its familiar marks. And then, past his window, seen throughthis, went the farmer and his wife, on saddle and pillion, jogging tomeeting-house or market; and the very dog, the cow coming home frompasture, the old familiar faces of his childhood, looked differently. Andso at last, at the end of the month, it settled into a most deep andbrilliant crimson, as if it were the essence of the blood of the young manwhom he had slain; the flower being now triumphant, it had given its ownhue to the whole mass, and had grown brighter every day; so that it seemedto have inherent light, as if it were a planet by itself, a heart ofcrimson fire burning within it. 

And when this had been done, and there was no more change, showing that thedigestion was perfect, then he took it and placed it where the changingmoon would fall upon it; and then again he watched it, covering it indarkness by day, revealing it to the moon by night; and watching it here, too, through more changes. And by and by he perceived that the deepcrimson hue was departing, --not fading; we cannot say that, because of theprodigious lustre which still pervaded it, and was not less strong thanever; but certainly the hue became fainter, now a rose-color, now fainter, fainter still, till there was only left the purest whiteness of the moonitself; a change that somewhat disappointed and grieved Septimius, thoughstill it seemed fit that the water of life should be of no one richness, because it must combine all. As the absorbed young man gazed through thelonely nights at his beloved liquor, he fancied sometimes that he couldsee wonderful things in the crystal sphere of the vase; as in Doctor Dee'smagic crystal used to be seen, which now lies in the British Museum;representations, it might be, of things in the far past, or in the furtherfuture, scenes in which he himself was to act, persons yet unborn, thebeautiful and the wise, with whom he was to be associated, palaces andtowers, modes of hitherto unseen architecture, that old hall in England towhich he had a hereditary right, with its gables, and its smooth lawn; thewitch-meetings in which his ancestor used to take part; Aunt Keziah on herdeath-bed; and, flitting through all, the shade of Sibyl Dacy, eying himfrom secret nooks, or some remoteness, with her peculiar mischievoussmile, beckoning him into the sphere. All such visions would he see, andthen become aware that he had been in a dream, superinduced by too muchwatching, too intent thought; so that living among so many dreams, he wasalmost afraid that he should find himself waking out of yet another, andfind that the vase itself and the liquid it contained were alsodream-stuff. But no; these were real. 

There was one change that surprised him, although he accepted it withoutdoubt, and, indeed, it did imply a wonderful efficacy, at leastsingularity, in the newly converted liquid. It grew strangely cool intemperature in the latter part of his watching it. It appeared to imbibeits coldness from the cold, chaste moon, until it seemed to Septimius thatit was colder than ice itself; the mist gathered upon the crystal vase asupon a tumbler of iced water in a warm room. Some say it actually gatheredthick with frost, crystallized into a thousand fantastic and beautifulshapes, but this I do not know so well. Only it was very cold. Septimiuspondered upon it, and thought he saw that life itself was cold, individualin its being, a high, pure essence, chastened from all heats; cold, therefore, and therefore invigorating. 

Thus much, inquiring deeply, and with painful research into the liquidwhich Septimius concocted, have I been able to learn about it, --itsaspect, its properties; and now I suppose it to be quite perfect, and thatnothing remains but to put it to such use as he had so long been laboringfor. But this, somehow or other, he found in himself a strong reluctanceto do; he paused, as it were, at the point where his pathway separateditself from that of other men, and meditated whether it were worth whileto give up everything that Providence had provided, and take instead onlythis lonely gift of immortal life. Not that he ever really had any doubtabout it; no, indeed; but it was his security, his consciousness that heheld the bright sphere of all futurity in his hand, that made him dally alittle, now that he could quaff immortality as soon as he liked. 

Besides, now that he looked forward from the verge of mortal destiny, thepath before him seemed so very lonely. Might he not seek some one ownfriend--one single heart--before he took the final step? There was SibylDacy! Oh, what bliss, if that pale girl might set out with him on hisjourney! how sweet, how sweet, to wander with her through the places elseso desolate! for he could but half see, half know things, without her tohelp him. And perhaps it might be so. She must already know, or stronglysuspect, that he was engaged in some deep, mysterious research; it mightbe that, with her sources of mysterious knowledge among her legendarylore, she knew of this. Then, oh, to think of those dreams which lovershave always had, when their new love makes the old earth seem so happy andglorious a place, that not a thousand nor an endless succession of yearscan exhaust it, --all those realized for him and her! If this could not be, what should he do? Would he venture onward into such a wintry futurity, symbolized, perhaps, by the coldness of the crystal goblet? He shivered atthe thought. 

Now, what had passed between Septimius and Sibyl Dacy is not upon record, only that one day they were walking together on the hill-top, or sittingby the little hillock, and talking earnestly together. Sibyl's face was alittle flushed with some excitement, and really she looked very beautiful;and Septimius's dark face, too, had a solemn triumph in it that made himalso beautiful; so rapt he was after all those watchings, and emaciations, and the pure, unworldly, self-denying life that he had spent. They talkedas if there were some foregone conclusion on which they based what theysaid. 

"Will you not be weary in the time that we shall spend together?" askedhe. 

"Oh no, " said Sibyl, smiling, "I am sure that it will be very full ofenjoyment. "

"Yes, " said Septimius, "though now I must remould my anticipations; for Ihave only dared, hitherto, to map out a solitary existence. "

"And how did you do that?" asked Sibyl. 

"Oh, there is nothing that would come amiss, " answered Septimius; "for, truly, as I have lived apart from men, yet it is really not because I haveno taste for whatever humanity includes: but I would fain, if I might, live everybody's life at once, or, since that may not be, each insuccession. I would try the life of power, ruling men; but that might comelater, after I had had long experience of men, and had lived through muchhistory, and had seen, as a disinterested observer, how men might best beinfluenced for their own good. I would be a great traveller at first; andas a man newly coming into possession of an estate goes over it, and viewseach separate field and wood-lot, and whatever features it contains, sowill I, whose the world is, because I possess it forever; whereas allothers are but transitory guests. So will I wander over this world ofmine, and be acquainted with all its shores, seas, rivers, mountains, fields, and the various peoples who inhabit them, and to whom it is mypurpose to be a benefactor; for think not, dear Sibyl, that I suppose thisgreat lot of mine to have devolved upon me without great duties, --heavyand difficult to fulfil, though glorious in their adequate fulfilment. Butfor all this there will be time. In a century I shall partially have seenthis earth, and known at least its boundaries, --have gotten for myself theoutline, to be filled up hereafter. "

"And I, too, " said Sibyl, "will have my duties and labors; for while youare wandering about among men, I will go among women, and observe andconverse with them, from the princess to the peasant-girl; and will findout what is the matter, that woman gets so large a share of human miserylaid on her weak shoulders. I will see why it is that, whether she be aroyal princess, she has to be sacrificed to matters of state, or acottage-girl, still somehow the thing not fit for her is done; and whetherthere is or no some deadly curse on woman, so that she has nothing to do, and nothing to enjoy, but only to be wronged by man and still to love him, and despise herself for it, --to be shaky in her revenges. And then if, after all this investigation, it turns out--as I suspect--that woman isnot capable of being helped, that there is something inherent in herselfthat makes it hopeless to struggle for her redemption, then what shall Ido? Nay, I know not, unless to preach to the sisterhood that they all killtheir female children as fast as they are born, and then let thegenerations of men manage as they can! Woman, so feeble and crazy in body, fair enough sometimes, but full of infirmities; not strong, with nervesprone to every pain; ailing, full of little weaknesses, more contemptiblethan great ones!"

"That would be a dreary end, Sibyl, " said Septimius. "But I trust that weshall be able to hush up this weary and perpetual wail of womankind oneasier terms than that. Well, dearest Sibyl, after we have spent a hundredyears in examining into the real state of mankind, and another century indevising and putting in execution remedies for his ills, until our maturerthought has time to perfect his cure, we shall then have earned a littleplaytime, --a century of pastime, in which we will search out whatever joycan be had by thoughtful people, and that childlike sportiveness whichcomes out of growing wisdom, and enjoyment of every kind. We will gatherabout us everything beautiful and stately, a great palace, for we shallthen be so experienced that all riches will be easy for us to get; withrich furniture, pictures, statues, and all royal ornaments; and side byside with this life we will have a little cottage, and see which is thehappiest, for this has always been a dispute. For this century we willneither toil nor spin, nor think of anything beyond the day that ispassing over us. There is time enough to do all that we have to do. "

"A hundred years of play! Will not that be tiresome?" said Sibyl. 

"If it is, " said Septimius, "the next century shall make up for it; forthen we will contrive deep philosophies, take up one theory after another, and find out its hollowness and inadequacy, and fling it aside, the rottenrubbish that they all are, until we have strewn the whole realm of humanthought with the broken fragments, all smashed up. And then, on this greatmound of broken potsherds (like that great Monte Testaccio, which we willgo to Rome to see), we will build a system that shall stand, and by whichmankind shall look far into the ways of Providence, and find practicaluses of the deepest kind in what it has thought merely speculation. Andthen, when the hundred years are over, and this great work done, we willstill be so free in mind, that we shall see the emptiness of our owntheory, though men see only its truth. And so, if we like more of thispastime, then shall another and another century, and as many more as welike, be spent in the same way. "

"And after that another play-day?" asked Sibyl Dacy. 

"Yes, " said Septimius, "only it shall not be called so; for the nextcentury we will get ourselves made rulers of the earth; and knowing men sowell, and having so wrought our theories of government and what not, wewill proceed to execute them, --which will be as easy to us as a child'sarrangement of its dolls. We will smile superior, to see what a facilething it is to make a people happy. In our reign of a hundred years, weshall have time to extinguish errors, and make the world see the absurdityof them; to substitute other methods of government for the old, bad ones;to fit the people to govern itself, to do with little government, to dowith none; and when this is effected, we will vanish from our lovingpeople, and be seen no more, but be reverenced as gods, --we, meanwhile, being overlooked, and smiling to ourselves, amid the very crowd that islooking for us. "

"I intend, " said Sibyl, making this wild talk wilder by that petulancewhich she so often showed, --"I intend to introduce a new fashion of dresswhen I am queen, and that shall be my part of the great reform which youare going to make. And for my crown, I intend to have it of flowers, inwhich that strange crimson one shall be the chief; and when I vanish, thisflower shall remain behind, and perhaps they shall have a glimpse of mewearing it in the crowd. Well, what next?"

"After this, " said Septimius, "having seen so much of affairs, and havinglived so many hundred years, I will sit down and write a history, such ashistories ought to be, and never have been. And it shall be so wise, andso vivid, and so self-evidently true, that people shall be convinced fromit that there is some undying one among them, because only an eye-witnesscould have written it, or could have gained so much wisdom as was needfulfor it. "

"And for my part in the history, " said Sibyl, "I will record the variouslengths of women's waists, and the fashion of their sleeves. What next?"

"By this time, " said Septimius, --"how many hundred years have we nowlived?--by this time, I shall have pretty well prepared myself for what Ihave been contemplating from the first. I will become a religious teacher, and promulgate a faith, and prove it by prophecies and miracles; for mylong experience will enable me to do the first, and the acquaintance whichI shall have formed with the mysteries of science will put the latter atmy fingers' ends. So I will be a prophet, a greater than Mahomet, and willput all man's hopes into my doctrine, and make him good, holy, happy; andhe shall put up his prayers to his Creator, and find them answered, because they shall be wise, and accompanied with effort. This will be agreat work, and may earn me another rest and pastime. "

[_He would see, in one age, the column raised in memory of some greatdead of his in a former one_. ]

"And what shall that be?" asked Sibyl Dacy. 

"Why, " said Septimius, looking askance at her, and speaking with a certainhesitation, "I have learned, Sibyl, that it is a weary toil for a man tobe always good, holy, and upright. In my life as a sainted prophet, Ishall have somewhat too much of this; it will be enervating and sickening, and I shall need another kind of diet. So, in the next hundred years, Sibyl, --in that one little century, --methinks I would fain be what mencall wicked. How can I know my brethren, unless I do that once? I wouldexperience all. Imagination is only a dream. I can imagine myself amurderer, and all other modes of crime; but it leaves no real impressionon the heart. I must live these things. "

[_The rampant unrestraint, which is the characteristic ofwickedness_. ]

"Good, " said Sibyl, quietly; "and I too. "

"And thou too!" exclaimed Septimius. "Not so, Sibyl. I would reserve thee, good and pure, so that there may be to me the means of redemption, --somestable hold in the moral confusion that I will create around myself, whereby I shall by and by get back into order, virtue, and religion. Elseall is lost, and I may become a devil, and make my own hell around me; so, Sibyl, do thou be good forever, and not fall nor slip a moment. Promiseme!"

"We will consider about that in some other century, " replied Sibyl, composedly. "There is time enough yet. What next?"

"Nay, this is enough for the present, " said Septimius. "New vistas willopen themselves before us continually, as we go onward. How idle to thinkthat one little lifetime would exhaust the world! After hundreds ofcenturies, I feel as if we might still be on the threshold. There is thematerial world, for instance, to perfect; to draw out the powers ofnature, so that man shall, as it were, give life to all modes of matter, and make them his ministering servants. Swift ways of travel, by earth, sea, and air; machines for doing whatever the hand of man now does, sothat we shall do all but put souls into our wheel-work and watch-work; themodes of making night into day; of getting control over the weather andthe seasons; the virtues of plants, --these are some of the easier thingsthou shalt help me do. "

"I have no taste for that, " said Sibyl, "unless I could make an embroideryworked of steel. "

"And so, Sibyl, " continued Septimius, pursuing his strain of solemnenthusiasm, intermingled as it was with wild, excursive vagaries, "we willgo on as many centuries as we choose. Perhaps, --yet I think notso, --perhaps, however, in the course of lengthened time, we may find thatthe world is the same always, and mankind the same, and all possibilitiesof human fortune the same; so that by and by we shall discover that thesame old scenery serves the world's stage in all ages, and that the storyis always the same; yes, and the actors always the same, though none butwe can be aware of it; and that the actors and spectators would grow wearyof it, were they not bathed in forgetful sleep, and so think themselvesnew made in each successive lifetime. We may find that the stuff of theworld's drama, and the passions which seem to play in it, have a monotony, when once we have tried them; that in only once trying them, and viewingthem, we find out their secret, and that afterwards the show is toosuperficial to arrest our attention. As dramatists and novelists repeattheir plots, so does man's life repeat itself, and at length grows stale. This is what, in my desponding moments, I have sometimes suspected. Whatto do, if this be so?"

"Nay, that is a serious consideration, " replied Sibyl, assuming an air ofmock alarm, "if you really think we shall be tired of life, whether orno. "

"I do not think it, Sibyl, " replied Septimius. "By much musing on thismatter, I have convinced myself that man is not capable of debarringhimself utterly from death, since it is evidently a remedy for many evilsthat nothing else would cure. This means that we have discovered ofremoving death to an indefinite distance is not supernatural; on thecontrary, it is the most natural thing in the world, --the very perfectionof the natural, since it consists in applying the powers and processes ofNature to the prolongation of the existence of man, her most perfecthandiwork; and this could only be done by entire accordance and co-effortwith Nature. Therefore Nature is not changed, and death remains as one ofher steps, just as heretofore. Therefore, when we have exhausted theworld, whether by going through its apparently vast variety, or bysatisfying ourselves that it is all a repetition of one thing, we willcall death as the friend to introduce us to something new. "

[_He would write a poem, or other great work, inappreciable at first, andlive to see it famous, --himself among his own posterity_. ]

"Oh, insatiable love of life!" exclaimed Sibyl, looking at him with strangepity. "Canst thou not conceive that mortal brain and heart might at lengthbe content to sleep?"

"Never, Sibyl!" replied Septimius, with horror. "My spirit delights in thethought of an infinite eternity. Does not thine?"

"One little interval--a few centuries only--of dreamless sleep, " saidSibyl, pleadingly. "Cannot you allow me that?"

"I fear, " said Septimius, "our identity would change in that repose; itwould be a Lethe between the two parts of our being, and with suchdisconnection a continued life would be equivalent to a new one, andtherefore valueless. "

In such talk, snatching in the fog at the fragments of philosophy, theycontinued fitfully; Septimius calming down his enthusiasm thus, whichotherwise might have burst forth in madness, affrighting the quiet littlevillage with the marvellous things about which they mused. Septimius couldnot quite satisfy himself whether Sibyl Dacy shared in his belief of thesuccess of his experiment, and was confident, as he was, that he held inhis control the means of unlimited life; neither was he sure that sheloved him, --loved him well enough to undertake with him the long marchthat he propounded to her, making a union an affair of so vastly moreimportance than it is in the brief lifetime of other mortals. But hedetermined to let her drink the invaluable draught along with him, and totrust to the long future, and the better opportunities that time wouldgive him, and his outliving all rivals, and the loneliness which anundying life would throw around her, without him, as the pledges of hissuccess. 

 * * * * *

And now the happy day had come for the celebration of Robert Hagburn'smarriage with pretty Rose Garfield, the brave with the fair; and, asusual, the ceremony was to take place in the evening, and at the house ofthe bride; and preparations were made accordingly: the wedding-cake, whichthe bride's own fair hands had mingled with her tender hopes, and seasonedit with maiden fears, so that its composition was as much ethereal assensual; and the neighbors and friends were invited, and came with theirbest wishes and good-will. For Rose shared not at all the distrust, thesuspicion, or whatever it was, that had waited on the true branch ofSeptimius's family, in one shape or another, ever since the memory of man;and all--except, it might be, some disappointed damsels who had hoped towin Robert Hagburn for themselves--rejoiced at the approaching union ofthis fit couple, and wished them happiness. 

Septimius, too, accorded his gracious consent to the union, and while hethought within himself that such a brief union was not worth the troubleand feeling which his sister and her lover wasted on it, still he wishedthem happiness. As he compared their brevity with his long duration, hesmiled at their little fancies of loves, of which he seemed to see theend; the flower of a brief summer, blooming beautifully enough, andshedding its leaves, the fragrance of which would linger a little while inhis memory, and then be gone. He wondered how far in the coming centurieshe should remember this wedding of his sister Rose; perhaps he would meet, five hundred years hence, some descendant of the marriage, --a fair girl, bearing the traits of his sister's fresh beauty; a young man, recallingthe strength and manly comeliness of Robert Hagburn, --and could claimacquaintance and kindred. He would be the guardian, from generation togeneration, of this race; their ever-reappearing friend at times of need;and meeting them from age to age, would find traditions of himself growingpoetical in the lapse of time; so that he would smile at seeing hisfeatures look so much more majestic in their fancies than in reality. Soall along their course, in the history of the family, he would tracehimself, and by his traditions he would make them acquainted with alltheir ancestors, and so still be warmed by kindred blood. 

And Robert Hagburn, full of the life of the moment, warm with generousblood, came in a new uniform, looking fit to be the founder of a race whoshould look back to a hero sire. He greeted Septimius as a brother. Theminister, too, came, of course, and mingled with the throng, with decorousaspect, and greeted Septimius with more formality than he had been wont;for Septimius had insensibly withdrawn himself from the minister'sintimacy, as he got deeper and deeper into the enthusiasm of his owncause. Besides, the minister did not fail to see that his once devotedscholar had contracted habits of study into the secrets of which hehimself was not admitted, and that he no longer alluded to studies for theministry; and he was inclined to suspect that Septimius had unfortunatelyallowed infidel ideas to assail, at least, if not to overcome, thatfortress of firm faith, which he had striven to found and strengthen inhis mind, --a misfortune frequently befalling speculative and imaginativeand melancholic persons, like Septimius, whom the Devil is all the timeplanning to assault, because he feels confident of having a traitor in thegarrison. The minister had heard that this was the fashion of Septimius'sfamily, and that even the famous divine, who, in his eyes, was the gloryof it, had had his season of wild infidelity in his youth, before gracetouched him; and had always thereafter, throughout his long and piouslife, been subject to seasons of black and sulphurous despondency, duringwhich he disbelieved the faith which, at other times, he preachedpowerfully. "

"Septimius, my young friend, " said he, "are you yet ready to be a preacherof the truth?"

"Not yet, reverend pastor, " said Septimius, smiling at the thought of theday before, that the career of a prophet would be one that he should sometime assume. "There will be time enough to preach the truth when I betterknow it. "

"You do not look as if you knew it so well as formerly, instead of better, "said his reverend friend, looking into the deep furrows of his brow, andinto his wild and troubled eyes. 

"Perhaps not, " said Septimius. "There is time yet. "

These few words passed amid the bustle and murmur of the evening, while theguests were assembling, and all were awaiting the marriage with thatinterest which the event continually brings with it, common as it is, sothat nothing but death is commoner. Everybody congratulated the modestRose, who looked quiet and happy; and so she stood up at the proper time, and the minister married them with a certain fervor and individualapplication, that made them feel they were married indeed. Then thereensued a salutation of the bride, the first to kiss her being theminister, and then some respectable old justices and farmers, each withhis friendly smile and joke. Then went round the cake and wine, and othergood cheer, and the hereditary jokes with which brides used to be assailedin those days. I think, too, there was a dance, though how the couples inthe reel found space to foot it in the little room, I cannot imagine; atany rate, there was a bright light out of the windows, gleaming across theroad, and such a sound of the babble of numerous voices and merriment, that travellers passing by, on the lonely Lexington road, wished they wereof the party; and one or two of them stopped and went in, and saw thenew-made bride, drank to her health, and took a piece of the wedding-cakehome to dream upon. 

[_It is to be observed that Rose had requested of her friend, Sibyl Dacy, to act as one of her bridesmaids, of whom she had only the modest numberof two; and the strange girl declined, saying that her intermeddling wouldbring ill-fortune to the marriage_. ]

"Why do you talk such nonsense, Sibyl?" asked Rose. "You love me, I amsure, and wish me well; and your smile, such as it is, will be the promiseof prosperity, and I wish for it on my wedding-day. "

"I am an ill-fate, a sinister demon, Rose; a thing that has sprung out of agrave; and you had better not entreat me to twine my poison tendrils roundyour destinies. You would repent it. "

"Oh, hush, hush!" said Rose, putting her hand over her friend's mouth. "Naughty one! you can bless me, if you will, only you are wayward. "

"Bless you, then, dearest Rose, and all happiness on your marriage!"

Septimius had been duly present at the marriage, and kissed his sister withmoist eyes, it is said, and a solemn smile, as he gave her into thekeeping of Robert Hagburn; and there was something in the words he thenused that afterwards dwelt on her mind, as if they had a meaning in themthat asked to be sought into, and needed reply. 

"There, Rose, " he had said, "I have made myself ready for my destiny. Ihave no ties any more, and may set forth on my path without scruple. "

"Am I not your sister still, Septimius?" said she, shedding a tear or two. 

"A married woman is no sister; nothing but a married woman till she becomesa mother; and then what shall I have to do with you?"

He spoke with a certain eagerness to prove his case, which Rose could notunderstand, but which was probably to justify himself in severing, as hewas about to do, the link that connected him with his race, and making forhimself an exceptional destiny, which, if it did not entirely insulatehim, would at least create new relations with all. There he stood, poorfellow, looking on the mirthful throng, not in exultation, as might havebeen supposed, but with a strange sadness upon him. It seemed to him, atthat final moment, as if it were Death that linked together all; yes, andso gave the warmth to all. Wedlock itself seemed a brother of Death;wedlock, and its sweetest hopes, its holy companionship, its mysteries, and all that warm mysterious brotherhood that is between men; passing asthey do from mystery to mystery in a little gleam of light; that wild, sweet charm of uncertainty and temporariness, --how lovely it made themall, how innocent, even the worst of them; how hard and prosaic was hisown situation in comparison to theirs. He felt a gushing tenderness forthem, as if he would have flung aside his endless life, and rushed amongthem, saying, --

"Embrace me! I am still one of you, and will not leave you! Hold me fast!"

After this it was not particularly observed that both Septimius and SibylDacy had disappeared from the party, which, however, went on no lessmerrily without them. In truth, the habits of Sibyl Dacy were so wayward, and little squared by general rules, that nobody wondered or tried toaccount for them; and as for Septimius, he was such a studious man, solittle accustomed to mingle with his fellow-citizens on any occasion, thatit was rather wondered at that he should have spent so large a part of asociable evening with them, than that he should now retire. 

After they were gone the party received an unexpected addition, being noother than the excellent Doctor Portsoaken, who came to the door, announcing that he had just arrived on horseback from Boston, and that, his object being to have an interview with Sibyl Dacy, he had been toRobert Hagburn's house in quest of her; but, learning from the oldgrandmother that she was here, he had followed. 

Not finding her, he evinced no alarm, but was easily induced to sit downamong the merry company, and partake of some brandy, which, with otherliquors, Robert had provided in sufficient abundance; and that being a daywhen man had not learned to fear the glass, the doctor found them all in astate of hilarious chat. Taking out his German pipe, he joined the groupof smokers in the great chimney-corner, and entered into conversation withthem, laughing and joking, and mixing up his jests with that mysterioussuspicion which gave so strange a character to his intercourse. 

"It is good fortune, Mr. Hagburn, " quoth he, "that brings me here on thisauspicious day. And how has been my learned young friend Dr. Septimius, --for so he should be called, --and how have flourished hisstudies of late? The scientific world may look for great fruits from thatdecoction of his. "

"He'll never equal Aunt Keziah for herb-drinks, " said an old woman, smokingher pipe in the corner, "though I think likely he'll make a good doctorenough by and by. Poor Kezzy, she took a drop too much of her mixture, after all. I used to tell her how it would be; for Kezzy and I were prettygood friends once, before the Indian in her came out so strongly, --thesquaw and the witch, for she had them both in her blood, poor yellowKezzy!"

"Yes! had she indeed?" quoth the doctor; "and I have heard an odd story, that if the Feltons chose to go back to the old country, they'd find ahome and an estate there ready for them. "

The old woman mused, and puffed at her pipe. "Ah, yes, " muttered she, atlength, "I remember to have heard something about that; and how, if Feltonchose to strike into the woods, he'd find a tribe of wild Indians thereready to take him for their sagamore, and conquer the whites; and how, ifhe chose to go to England, there was a great old house all ready for him, and a fire burning in the hall, and a dinner-table spread, and thetall-posted bed ready, with clean sheets, in the best chamber, and a manwaiting at the gate to show him in. Only there was a spell of a bloodyfootstep left on the threshold by the last that came out, so that none ofhis posterity could ever cross it again. But that was all nonsense!"

"Strange old things one dreams in a chimney-corner, " quoth the doctor. "Doyou remember any more of this?"

"No, no; I'm so forgetful nowadays, " said old Mrs. Hagburn; "only it seemsas if I had my memories in my pipe, and they curl up in smoke. I've knownthese Feltons all along, or it seems as if I had; for I'm nigh ninetyyears old now, and I was two year old in the witch's time, and I have seena piece of the halter that old Felton was hung with. "

Some of the company laughed. 

"That must have been a curious sight, " quoth the doctor. 

"It is not well, " said the minister seriously to the doctor, "to stir upthese old remembrances, making the poor old lady appear absurd. I know notthat she need to be ashamed of showing the weaknesses of the generation towhich she belonged; but I do not like to see old age put at thisdisadvantage among the young. "

"Nay, my good and reverend sir, " returned the doctor, "I mean no suchdisrespect as you seem to think. Forbid it, ye upper powers, that I shouldcast any ridicule on beliefs, --superstitions, do you call them?--that areas worthy of faith, for aught I know, as any that are preached in thepulpit. If the old lady would tell me any secret of the old Felton'sscience, I shall treasure it sacredly; for I interpret these stories abouthis miraculous gifts as meaning that he had a great command over naturalscience, the virtues of plants, the capacities of the human body. "

"While these things were passing, or before they passed, or some time inthat eventful night, Septimius had withdrawn to his study, when there wasa low tap at the door, and, opening it, Sibyl Dacy stood before him. Itseemed as if there had been a previous arrangement between them; forSeptimius evinced no surprise, only took her hand and drew her in. 

"How cold your hand is!" he exclaimed. "Nothing is so cold, except it bethe potent medicine. It makes me shiver. "

"Never mind that, " said Sibyl. "You look frightened at me. "

"Do I?" said Septimius. "No, not that; but this is such a crisis; andmethinks it is not yourself. Your eyes glare on me strangely. "

"Ah, yes; and you are not frightened at me? Well, I will try not to befrightened at myself. Time was, however, when I should have been. "

She looked round at Septimius's study, with its few old books, itsimplements of science, crucibles, retorts, and electrical machines; allthese she noticed little; but on the table drawn before the fire, therewas something that attracted her attention; it was a vase that seemed ofcrystal, made in that old fashion in which the Venetians made theirglasses, --a most pure kind of glass, with a long stalk, within which was acurved elaboration of fancy-work, wreathed and twisted. This old glass wasan heirloom of the Feltons, a relic that had come down with manytraditions, bringing its frail fabric safely through all the perils oftime, that had shattered empires; and, if space sufficed, I could tellmany stories of this curious vase, which was said, in its time, to havebeen the instrument both of the Devil's sacrament in the forest, and ofthe Christian in the village meeting-house. But, at any rate, it had beena part of the choice household gear of one of Septimius's ancestors, andwas engraved with his arms, artistically done. 

"Is that the drink of immortality?" said Sibyl. 

"Yes, Sibyl, " said Septimius. "Do but touch the goblet; see how cold itis. "

She put her slender, pallid fingers on the side of the goblet, andshuddered, just as Septimius did when he touched her hand. 

"Why should it be so cold?" said she, looking at Septimius. 

"Nay, I know not, unless because endless life goes round the circle andmeets death, and is just the same with it. O Sibyl, it is a fearful thingthat I have accomplished! Do you not feel it so? What if this shivershould last us through eternity?"

"Have you pursued this object so long, " said Sibyl, "to have these fearsrespecting it now? In that case, methinks I could be bold enough to drinkit alone, and look down upon you, as I did so, smiling at your fear totake the life offered you. "

"I do not fear, " said Septimius; "but yet I acknowledge there is a strange, powerful abhorrence in me towards this draught, which I know not how toaccount for, except as the reaction, the revulsion of feeling, consequentupon its being too long overstrained in one direction. I cannot help it. The meannesses, the littlenesses, the perplexities, the generalirksomeness of life, weigh upon me strangely. Thou didst refuse to drinkwith me. That being the case, methinks I could break the jewelled gobletnow, untasted, and choose the grave as the wiser part. "

"The beautiful goblet! What a pity to break it!" said Sibyl, with hercharacteristic malign and mysterious smile. "You cannot find it in yourheart to do it. "

"I could, --I can. So thou wilt not drink with me?"

"Do you know what you ask?" said Sibyl. "I am a being that sprung up, likethis flower, out of a grave; or, at least, I took root in a grave, and, growing there, have twined about your life, until you cannot possiblyescape from me. Ah, Septimius! you know me not. You know not what is in myheart towards you. Do you remember this broken miniature? would you wishto see the features that were destroyed when that bullet passed? Then lookat mine!"

"Sibyl! what do you tell me? Was it you--were they your features--whichthat young soldier kissed as he lay dying?"

"They were, " said Sibyl. "I loved him, and gave him that miniature, and theface they represented. I had given him all, and you slew him. "

"Then you hate me, " whispered, Septimius. 

"Do you call it hatred?" asked Sibyl, smiling. "Have I not aided you, thought with you, encouraged you, heard all your wild ravings when youdared to tell no one else? kept up your hopes; suggested; helped you withmy legendary lore to useful hints; helped you, also, in other ways, whichyou do not suspect? And now you ask me if I hate you. Does this look likeit?"

"No, " said Septimius. "And yet, since first I knew you, there has beensomething whispering me of harm, as if I sat near some mischief. There isin me the wild, natural blood of the Indian, the instinctive, the animalnature, which has ways of warning that civilized life polishes away andcuts out; and so, Sibyl, never did I approach you, but there werereluctances, drawings back, and, at the same time, a strong impulse tocome closest to you; and to that I yielded. But why, then, knowing that inthis grave lay the man you loved, laid there by my hand, --why did you aidme in an object which you must have seen was the breath of my life?"

"Ah, my friend, --my enemy, if you will have it so, --are you yet to learnthat the wish of a man's inmost heart is oftenest that by which he isruined and made miserable? But listen to me, Septimius. No matter for myearlier life; there is no reason why I should tell you the story, andconfess to you its weakness, its shame. It may be, I had more cause tohate the tenant of that grave, than to hate you who unconsciously avengedmy cause; nevertheless, I came here in hatred, and desire of revenge, meaning to lie in wait, and turn your dearest desire against you, to eatinto your life, and distil poison into it, I sitting on this grave, anddrawing fresh hatred from it; and at last, in the hour of your triumph, Imeant to make the triumph mine. "

"Is this still so?" asked Septimius, with pale lips: "or did your fellpurpose change?"

"Septimius, I am weak, --a weak, weak girl, --only a girl, Septimius; onlyeighteen yet, " exclaimed Sibyl. "It is young, is it not? I might beforgiven much. You know not how bitter my purpose was to you. But look, Septimius, --could it be worse than this? Hush, be still! Do not stir!"

She lifted the beautiful goblet from the table, put it to her lips, anddrank a deep draught from it; then, smiling mockingly, she held it towardshim. 

"See; I have made myself immortal before you. Will you drink?"

He eagerly held out his hand to receive the goblet, but Sibyl, holding itbeyond his reach a moment, deliberately let it fall upon the hearth, whereit shivered into fragments, and the bright, cold water of immortality wasall spilt, shedding its strange fragrance around. 

"Sibyl, what have you done?" cried Septimius in rage and horror. 

"Be quiet! See what sort of immortality I win by it, --then, if you like, distil your drink of eternity again, and quaff it. "

"It is too late, Sibyl; it was a happiness that may never come again in alifetime. I shall perish as a dog does. It is too late!"

"Septimius, " said Sibyl, who looked strangely beautiful, as if the drink, giving her immortal life, had likewise the potency to give immortal beautyanswering to it, "listen to me. You have not learned all the secrets thatlay in those old legends, about which we have talked so much. There weretwo recipes, discovered or learned by the art of the studious old GasparFelton. One was said to be that secret of immortal life which so many oldsages sought for, and which some were said to have found; though, if thatwere the case, it is strange some of them have not lived till our day. Itsessence lay in a certain rare flower, which mingled properly with otheringredients of great potency in themselves, though still lacking thecrowning virtue till the flower was supplied, produced the drink ofimmortality. "

"Yes, and I had the flower, which I found in a grave, " said Septimius, "anddistilled the drink which you have spilt. "

"You had a flower, or what you called a flower, " said the girl. "But, Septimius, there was yet another drink, in which the same potentingredients were used; all but the last. In this, instead of the beautifulflower, was mingled the semblance of a flower, but really a baneful growthout of a grave. This I sowed there, and it converted the drink into apoison, famous in old science, --a poison which the Borgias used, and Maryde Medicis, --and which has brought to death many a famous person, when itwas desirable to his enemies. This is the drink I helped you to distil. Itbrings on death with pleasant and delightful thrills of the nerves. OSeptimius, Septimius, it is worth while to die, to be so blest, soexhilarated as I am now. "

"Good God, Sibyl, is this possible?"

"Even so, Septimius. I was helped by that old physician, Doctor Portsoaken, who, with some private purpose of his own, taught me what to do; for hewas skilled in all the mysteries of those old physicians, and knew thattheir poisons at least were efficacious, whatever their drinks ofimmortality might be. But the end has not turned out as I meant. A girl'sfancy is so shifting, Septimius. I thought I loved that youth in the graveyonder; but it was you I loved, --and I am dying. Forgive me for my evilpurposes, for I am dying. "

"Why hast thou spilt the drink?" said Septimius, bending his dark browsupon her, and frowning over her. "We might have died together. "

"No, live, Septimius, " said the girl, whose face appeared to grow brightand joyous, as if the drink of death exhilarated her like an intoxicatingfluid. "I would not let you have it, not one drop. But to think, " and hereshe laughed, "what a penance, --what months of wearisome labor thou hasthad, --and what thoughts, what dreams, and how I laughed in my sleeve atthem all the time! Ha, ha, ha! Then thou didst plan out future ages, andtalk poetry and prose to me. Did I not take it very demurely, and answerthee in the same style? and so thou didst love me, and kindly didst wishto take me with thee in thy immortality. O Septimius, I should have likedit well! Yes, latterly, only, I knew how the case stood. Oh, how Isurrounded thee with dreams, and instead of giving thee immortal life, sokneaded up the little life allotted thee with dreams and vaporing stuff, that thou didst not really live even that. Ah, it was a pleasant pastime, and pleasant is now the end of it. Kiss me, thou poor Septimius, onekiss!"

[_She gives the ridiculous aspect to his scheme, in an airy way_. ]

But as Septimius, who seemed stunned, instinctively bent forward to obeyher, she drew back. "No, there shall be no kiss! There may a little poisonlinger on my lips. Farewell! Dost thou mean still to seek for thy liquorof immortality?--ah, ah! It was a good jest. We will laugh at it when wemeet in the other world. "

And here poor Sibyl Dacy's laugh grew fainter, and dying away, she seemedto die with it; for there she was, with that mirthful, half-malignexpression still on her face, but motionless; so that however longSeptimius's life was likely to be, whether a few years or many centuries, he would still have her image in his memory so. And here she lay among hisbroken hopes, now shattered as completely as the goblet which held hisdraught, and as incapable of being formed again. 

 * * * * *

The next day, as Septimius did not appear, there was research for him onthe part of Doctor Portsoaken. His room was found empty, the beduntouched. Then they sought him on his favorite hill-top; but neither washe found there, although something was found that added to the wonder andalarm of his disappearance. It was the cold form of Sibyl Dacy, which wasextended on the hillock so often mentioned, with her arms thrown over it;but, looking in the dead face, the beholders were astonished to see acertain malign and mirthful expression, as if some airy part had beenplayed out, --some surprise, some practical joke of a peculiarly airy kindhad burst with fairy shoots of fire among the company. 

"Ah, she is dead! Poor Sibyl Dacy!" exclaimed Doctor Portsoaken. "Herscheme, then, has turned out amiss. "

This exclamation seemed to imply some knowledge of the mystery; and it soimpressed the auditors, among whom was Robert Hagburn, that they thoughtit not inexpedient to have an investigation; so the learned doctor was notuncivilly taken into custody and examined. Several interestingparticulars, some of which throw a certain degree of light on ournarrative, were discovered. For instance, that Sibyl Dacy, who was a nieceof the doctor, had been beguiled from her home and led over the sea byCyril Norton, and that the doctor, arriving in Boston with anotherregiment, had found her there, after her lover's death. Here there wassome discrepancy or darkness in the doctor's narrative. He appeared tohave consented to, or instigated (for it was not quite evident how far hisconcurrence had gone) this poor girl's scheme of going and brooding overher lover's grave, and living in close contiguity with the man who hadslain him. The doctor had not much to say for himself on this point; butthere was found reason to believe that he was acting in the interest ofsome English claimant of a great estate that was left without an apparentheir by the death of Cyril Norton, and there was even a suspicion that he, with his fantastic science and antiquated empiricism, had been at thebottom of the scheme of poisoning, which was so strangely intertwined withSeptimius's notion, in which he went so nearly crazed, of a drink ofimmortality. It was observable, however, that the doctor--such a humbug inscientific matters, that he had perhaps bewildered himself--seemed to havea sort of faith in the efficacy of the recipe which had so strangely cometo light, provided the true flower could be discovered; but that flower, according to Doctor Portsoaken, had not been seen on earth for manycenturies, and was banished probably forever. The flower, or fungus, whichSeptimius had mistaken for it, was a sort of earthly or devilishcounterpart of it, and was greatly in request among the old poisoners forits admirable uses in their art. In fine, no tangible evidence being foundagainst the worthy doctor, he was permitted to depart, and disappearedfrom the neighborhood, to the scandal of many people, unhanged; leavingbehind him few available effects beyond the web and empty skin of anenormous spider. 

As to Septimius, he returned no more to his cottage by the wayside, andnone undertook to tell what had become of him; crushed and annihilated, asit were, by the failure of his magnificent and most absurd dreams. Rumorsthere have been, however, at various times, that there had appeared anAmerican claimant, who had made out his right to the great estate ofSmithell's Hall, and had dwelt there, and left posterity, and that in thesubsequent generation an ancient baronial title had been revived in favorof the son and heir of the American. Whether this was our Septimius, Icannot tell; but I should be rather sorry to believe that after suchsplendid schemes as he had entertained, he should have been content tosettle down into the fat substance and reality of English life, and die inhis due time, and be buried like any other man. 

A few years ago, while in England, I visited Smithell's Hall, and wasentertained there, not knowing at the time that I could claim its owner asmy countryman by descent; though, as I now remember, I was struck by thethin, sallow, American cast of his face, and the lithe slenderness of hisfigure, and seem now (but this may be my fancy) to recollect a certainIndian glitter of the eye and cast of feature. 

As for the Bloody Footstep, I saw it with my own eyes, and will venture tosuggest that it was a mere natural reddish stain in the stone, convertedby superstition into a Bloody Footstep.