CHAPTER IX.

Thought, and affliction, passion, Hell itself,
She turns to favour, and to prettiness.

HAMLET.

It was on the evening of the day on which the conversation we have related, had occurred between young Wilson and his mother, that Jane, just as she had parted with Erskine, after an unusually delightful walk, and was entering her aunt's door, heard her name pronounced in a low voice. She turned, and saw an old man emerging from behind a projection of the house. He placed his finger on his lips by way of an admonition to silence, and said softly to Jane, "For the love of Heaven, come to my house to-night; you may save life; tell no one, and come after the family is in bed."

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But, John, I do not know the way to your house," replied Jane, amazed at the strange request.

"You shall have a guide, Miss. Don't be afraid; 'tis not like you to be afraid, when there is good to be done; and I tell you, you may save life; and

every one that knows me, knows I never tell a lie

for any body."

"Well," said Jane, after a moment's pause, "it I go, how shall I find the way ?"?

"That's what I am afraid will frighten you most of all; but it must be so. You know where Lucy Willett's grave is, on the side of the hill, above the river; there you will find crazy Bet waiting for you. She is a poor cracked body, but there is nobody I would sooner trust in any trouble; besides, she is in the secret already, and there is no help for it."

"But," said Jane, " may I not get some one else with me

to go

יו?

"Not for the wide world. Nothing will harm you."

Jane was about to make some further protestation, when a sound from the house alarmed the man, and he disappeared as suddenly as he had made his entree.

John was an old man, who had been well known to two or three successive generations in the village. He had never had health or strength for hard labour, but had gained a subsistence by making baskets, weaving new seats into old chairs, collecting herbs for spring beer, and digging medicinal roots from the mountains: miscellaneous offices, which are usually performed by one person, where the great principle of a division of labour is yet unknown and unnecessary. A disciple of Gall might, perhaps, have detected in the conformation of the old man's head, certain indications

of a contemplative turn of mind, and a feeling heart; but, as we are unlearned in that fashionable science, we shall simply remark, that there was, in the mild cast of his large but sunken eye, and the deep-worn channels of his face, an expression that would lead an observer to think he had felt and suffered; that he possessed the wisdom of reflection, as well as the experience of age; and that he had been accustomed, in nature's silent and solitary places, to commune with the Author of Nature. He inhabited a tenement at some distance from the village, but within the precincts of the town. When the skill of the domestic leeches was at fault, in the case of a sick cow or a wormy child, he was called to a consultation, and the efficacy of the simples he had administered, had sometimes proved so great, as to induce a suspicion of a mysterious charm. But the superstitious belief in witches and magic has vanished with the mists of other times; and the awe of John of the Mountain,' as he was called, or for brevity's sake, John Mountain,' never outlived the period of childhood.

Jane knew John was honest and kind-hearted, and particularly well disposed to her, for he had occasionally brought her a pretty wild-flower, or a basket of berries, and then he would say, "Ah, Miss Jane, I grow old and forgetful, but the old man can't forget the kindness that's been done to him in days past; you was as gay as a lark then. My poor old bald head! it's almost as bare inside as out; but I shall never forget the time-it was a

sorrowful year, we had had a hard winter, the snows drifted on the mountains, and for six weeks I never saw the town, and poor Sarah lying sick at home; and when I did get out, I came straight to your mother's, for she had always a pitiful heart, and an open and a full hand too, and she stocked

my alms basket full of provisions. Then you came skipping out of the other room, with a flannel gown in your hand, and your very eyes laughed with pleasure, and when you gave it to me, you said, "It is for your wife, and I sewed every stitch of it, John ;" and then you was not bigger than a poppet, and could not speak plain yet. When I got home, and told my old woman, she shook her head, and said, you "was not long for this world;" but I laughed at her foolishness, and asked her, if the finest saplings did not live to make the noblest trees? Thanks to Him that is above, you are alive at this day, and many a wanderer will yet find shelter in your branches."

We trust our readers will pardon this digression, and accept the gratitude of the old man, as a proof that all men's good deeds are not written in sand.'

After John's departure, Jane remained for a few moments where he had left her, ruminating on his strange request, when her attention was called to a noise in her aunt's sleeping apartment, and she heard, as she thought, crazy Bet's voice raised to its highest pitch. She passed hastily through the passage, and on opening her aunt's door, she beheld a scene of the greatest confusion.

The bed-clothes had been hastily stripped from the bed and strewed on the floor, and Bet stood at the open window with the bed in her right hand. She had, by a sudden exertion of her strength, made an enormous rent in the well-wove home-made tick, and was now quite leisurely shaking out the few feathers that still adhered to it. In her left hand she held a broom, which she dexterously brandished, to defend herself from the interference of Sukey, the coloured servant girl, who stood panic-struck and motionless; her dread of her mistress' vengeance impelling her forward, and her fear of the moody maniac operating upon her locomotive powers, like a gorgon influence. Her conflicting fears had not entirely changed her ethiopian skin, but they had subtracted her colour in stripes, till she looked like Robin Hood's willow wand.

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Why did you

not stop her?" exclaimed Jane, hastily passing the girl.

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Stop her, missy? the land's sake! I could as easy stop a flash of lightning! missy must think me a 'rac'lous creature, respecting me to hold back such a harricane."

At Jane's approach Bet dropped the broom, and threw the empty bed-tick at poor Sukey, who shook it off, not, however, till her woolly pate was completely powdered with the lint. "Now, Sukey," screamed Bet with a wild peal of laughter, "look in the glass, and you'll see how white you'll be in heaven; the black stains will all be washed out there!"