Tales from Blackwood Volume Iii Part 12

"Your fighting with Brady puts me in mind, that the finest duel I ever saw," said Joe MacGillycuddy, "was between a butcher and bull-dog, in the Diamond of Derry."

"I am obliged to you for your comparison," said Burke, "but I think it is now high time for dinner, and your beautiful story will keep. Has anybody the least idea where dinner is to be raised?"

To this no answer was returned, and we all began to reflect with the utmost intensity.

THE HEADSMAN.

A TALE OF DOOM.

[_MAGA_. FEBRUARY 1830.]

On a dark and gusty evening in November 178--, three students at a university in Northern Germany were sitting with Professor N. around the stove of his study. These four individuals had in the morning accompanied a much-valued friend, who was finally quitting the university, on the first stage of his journey homeward, and had returned at the full speed of their jaded horses, to reach the city before the closing of the gates. On arrival within the ramparts, they were invited by the Professor to drown their parting sorrow in a bowl of punch, and accompanied him to his abode, where they sat for some time gazing at the crackling firewood in the stove, and musing in silent melancholy upon the social and endearing qualities of the friend with whom they had parted--perhaps for ever. Meanwhile the materials for the most cheering of all potations lay untouched upon the table, the candles remained unlighted and forgotten, and, as if by tacit agreement, the friends continued to indulge in retrospective musings until the twilight waned into darkness, and the flickering light from the open door of the stove just enabled each of them to discern the saddened features of his neighbour. When returning to the city, their exhausted spirits had been painfully jarred by the spectacle, so rare in Germany, of a scaffold erecting without the ramparts for the execution of a murderer. Some remarks of the humane Professor upon the crime and punishment of the condemned did not tend to cheer the young men, who replied in monosyllables, and were pondering in mute and melancholy excitement upon the awful catastrophe so near at hand, when a tap at the door made them all start from the reverie in which they had been too deeply absorbed to hear any one ascending the stairs. "Come in," at length shouted the Professor, after pausing a little to recollect himself. The door was gently opened, and the dying flame in the stove threw its last blaze upon the pallid features of a tall and handsome youth, who entered the room with diffidence, and inquired if Professor N. was at home. "Here I am, my dear Julius," answered the kind Professor, as he rose from his chair, and grasped with cordial pressure the hand of the inquirer. "Can I do anything to oblige you?"

"I have called upon you to request a favour," answered the stranger hesitatingly, as he surveyed with searching looks the three students, whose features were not distinguishable in the Rembrandt chiaroscuro of the Professor's study.

"If no secret," said the Professor briskly, as he replenished his stove with beechwood, "explain yourself freely. All present are my particular friends, and certainly no enemies of yours. Say, my dear boys! you all know and respect our worthy Harpocrates?"

The students briefly a.s.sented, and the Professor invited the stranger to take a seat near the fire, which, darting playfully through the pile of beech, soon roared loudly up the chimney. "I believe that Lieutenant B.

is your near relation?" began the pale youth, in tones which betrayed an inward tremor.

"He is my nephew," replied the Professor.

"I have understood," continued the stranger, "that he will command the detachment ordered on duty at the execution to-morrow. I am particularly desirous to stand near the criminal at the moment of decapitation, and wish, through your kind interference with the Lieutenant, to obtain admission within the circle."

"By all means," answered the Professor. "My nephew has invited me to accompany him, but I have declined it, and I must own that your request surprises me no little. How is it, my dear Julius, that you, who are by nature and habit so gentle and fastidious, can seek such strong aliment as the near inspection of a public execution? Even I, who served three campaigns in the artillery before I betook myself to mathematics, could not face a catastrophe so appalling."

"I study anatomy as an amateur," replied Julius, somewhat disconcerted; "and, as I may eventually embrace the medical profession, it is essential to my purpose to steel my nerves by inuring them to every trying spectacle."

"You are right, Julius!" exclaimed the Professor, with cordial a.s.sent.

"Trials are the fostering element of great hearts and lofty natures. To become great in anything, we must take the Egyptian test, and purify our feeble minds by pa.s.sing through fire and water. Call upon me to-morrow morning at seven. I will introduce you to my nephew, and he shall give you a place near the headsman. And now, not another word on this painful subject, which has haunted us ever since we heard the workmen hammering the scaffold this afternoon. So cheer up, my dear boys! Light the candles, and fill your meerschaums, while I compound a bowl of such punch as Anacreon would have made, had he known how.--No, no! my dear Julius," he continued, seizing the arm of the young stranger, who was rising to depart. "A friendly chance has brought you into our cordial circle, and I must insist upon your remaining my guest."

In vain did the three students, by whom Julius was more respected than liked, indicate by significant looks their objection to his stay; the benevolent Professor, who had long observed, with better feelings than curiosity, the pale features and habitual depression of a youth distinguished by great intellectual promise, persevered in his hospitable attempt, and at length succeeded in subduing his visible reluctance to stay.

Julius Arenbourg had been three years a student at the university, but his retiring habits and invincible taciturnity had hitherto prevented any free and amicable communion with his fellow-students. His name was that of a Swiss, or of a Strasburger; and, although he spoke German with facility, there were certain peculiarities of accent and idiom in his language which betrayed a longer familiarity with French: he shunned, however, all intercourse with the Swiss and French students at the university, and his country and connections were still a matter of conjecture. His engaging person and address, and the dejection so legibly written in his countenance, had excited on his arrival an immediate and general impression in his favour, but he shunned alike exclusive intimacy and general intercourse; his replies were either commonplaces or monosyllables; and as the unhappy and reserved find little sympathy from the young and joyous, his fellow-students dubbed him the Harpocrates of the university, and left him to solitude and self-communion.

The kind-hearted Professor, desirous to lead this interesting youth into habits of social ease and intimacy with the students present, exerted his colloquial powers, and endeavoured to lead them into general conversation; but his benevolent endeavours were baffled by the ineradicable impression which the approaching execution had made upon the mind of every student of good feeling in the university; and the successive attempts of the Professor were succeeded by long intervals of brooding and melancholy silence. At length, one of the young men, notwithstanding his host's prohibition, could no longer refrain from adverting to this all-absorbing subject. "Excuse me, Professor," he began, "but I find it impossible to withdraw my thoughts, even for a moment, from the present situation of the poor wretch who is so soon to bend his neck to the executioner. It appears to me, that the intervening hours of deadly and rising terror, are the real and atoning punishment, and not the friendly blow which releases him from the fear of death.

Even the reprieve, sometimes granted on the scaffold, is no compensation for terrors so intense. The criminal has already died many deaths, and the new existence, thus tardily bestowed, can be compared only with the revival of the seeming dead in his coffin. Gracious Heaven!" he continued, with shuddering emotion, "how dreadfully bitter must be the sensations of the poor fellow at this moment!"

"In all probability," replied another student, "he has either made up his mind to the impending catastrophe, or he finds sustaining consolation in the hope of a reprieve. At all events, his reflections must have, in my opinion, a more justified character than those of the wretch, who, before another sunset, with a firm eye and unsparing hand, with as little remorse as the butcher who kills a lamb, will shed the blood of a fellow-creature--of one who never injured him in deed or thought--who will kneel to him with folded hands, and humbly stretch his neck to the fatal blow. Verily, I think that I would rather thus suffer death, than thus inflict it."

"Does not this view of the subject," remarked the third student, "justify, in some measure, the so often ridiculed prejudice of the uneducated mult.i.tude, who p.r.o.nounce an executioner infamous, because they cannot otherwise define the disgust which his appearance, even across a street, invariably excites?[B] And may not this a.s.sociation of ideas be grounded on a religious feeling? The Mosaic law provided a sanctuary for the blood-guilty who had committed murder in sudden wrath; and, except in cases of rare enormity, compa.s.sion for the criminal must tend to increase the popular detestation of a man, who, in consideration of a good salary, is ever ready to shed the blood of a fellow-creature."

[Footnote B: Throughout Germany, public executioners are called infamous, and are shut out of the pale of society. A similar feeling prevailed in France before the Revolution.]

"For the honour of human nature," observed the Professor, "I will hope that, could we read the hearts of many who fulfil this terrible duty to society, we should behold, both before and during its exercise, strong feelings of reluctance and compa.s.sion. I can conceive, too, that those who have by long habit become callous to their vocation, are by no means dest.i.tute of kindly feeling in matters unconnected with their calling; but I do not comprehend how any man can voluntarily devote himself to an office which excludes him for life from the sympathy and society of his fellow-men; nor do I believe that this terrible vocation is ever adopted, except by those who, through early training, or a long course of crime, have blunted the best feelings of human nature."

Julius, who had hitherto been a silent but attentive listener, now addressed the Professor with an animation which surprised all present.

"You must excuse me, Professor," said he, "if I dissent from your last remark. You seem to have overlooked the fact, that the numerous individuals devoted to this melancholy office, in Germany and France, compose two large families severally connected by intermarriages and adoptions. In France especially, the executioner is under a compulsory obligation to transmit his office to one of his sons, who grows up with a consciousness of this necessity; and, being systematically trained to it, he submits, in most instances, without repining, to his painful lot.

If the executioner has only daughters, he adopts a young man, who becomes his son-in-law and successor. I knew an instance of adoption which affords decisive evidence, that even a youth of education and refinement, of spotless integrity, diffident, gentle, and humane to a fault, may be compelled, by the force of circ.u.mstances, to undertake an office from which his nature recoils with abhorrence, and from which, in this instance, the party would have been saved by a higher degree of moral courage."

It was here remarked by one of the students, that cruel propensities and a want of courage were perfectly compatible.

"But I am speaking of a _good_ man," warmly rejoined Julius, "and good in the best and most comprehensive sense of the word. A man, not only pure from all offence, but of primitive and uncorrupted singleness of heart. For the truth of this I can pledge myself, for I know him well."

At this undisguised avowal of his acquaintance with a public executioner, his auditors looked at him, and at each other, with obvious dismay. "Oh!" continued he, with a mournful smile, while his pale face was flushed with strong emotion, "wonder not at this acknowledgment. I can a.s.sure you, that, on my part, the acquaintance was involuntary; and had we not already devoted too much time to this painful subject, I could, by relating this headsman's strange and eventful history, fully vindicate my opinion of him, and of the unhappy caste to which he belongs."

The Professor, who thought that the detail of an interesting story would excite in the three students a friendly feeling for the melancholy narrator, besought him earnestly to indulge them with the recital. "In our present frame of mind," he added, "your narrative will lay a strong hold, and will doubtless tend to reconcile our various opinions."

The students warmly seconded the Professor's entreaties, and, thus called upon, Julius could no longer hesitate to comply. A flush of timidity, or of some more deeply-seated feeling, darkened his pale forehead, while he paused some moments as if to collect his firmness for a trying effort. He then began, in tones which, although tremulous at first, became deep and impressive as he proceeded; while the Professor and his friends, little prepared to expect any continuous recital from one who rarely uttered a connected sentence, listened with strong and rising interest to the following narrative.

It is about five-and-thirty years since a murderer was condemned to suffer death by the sword, at a town in western Normandy; and, on the morning of the execution, two senior pupils of the Jesuit-seminary went, by permission of their superiors, to view a spectacle of rare occurrence in that province. The cordial intimacy subsisting between these youths had long been a problem, both to their teachers and schoolfellows. So widely different, indeed, were they in appearance and character, and so harshly did the ferocity and cunning of the one contrast with the pure and gentle habits of the other, that they were called the "Wolf and the Lamb."

The older of them, named Bartholdy, was a native of Strasburg, tall and robust in person, but high-shouldered, stooping, and in dress and gait slovenly and clownish. His yellow visage was deeply furrowed with the small-pox, and his remarkably large and staring eyes, which were of a pale and milky blue, indicated a dulness bordering on imbecility. This appearance, however, was belied by his habitual cunning, and by the dexterity with which he often contrived to exculpate himself under criminatory circ.u.mstances. His spreading jawbones, large mouth, and coa.r.s.ely-moulded lips, truly betokened his p.r.o.neness to sensual gratifications; and the collective expression of his forbidding features was so remarkable, that a single glance sufficed to fix it in the memory for ever. It was rumoured in the seminary, that this youth had been sent by his friends to a school so remote from Strasburg in consequence of some highly culpable irregularities; and certainly these rumours were justified by occasional instances of wolfish ferocity and deliberate duplicity, for which he was severely but vainly punished.

Florian, the friend of Bartholdy, although nearly of the same age, was shorter by the head. His figure was slender and elegant--his countenance eminently prepossessing and ingenuous. His complexion was of that pure red and white, through which every flitting emotion is instantaneously legible. His hazel eyes sparkled with intelligence; locks of glossy chestnut curled round his fair and open forehead; and there was about his lips and smile a winning grace, which, at maturer age, would have been thought too feminine. Although not regularly handsome, there was in his form and features that harmonious configuration which is termed beauty of character, and which, when accompanied by the correspondent moral graces of gentleness and refinement, often lays a more enduring hold of the affections than beauty of a more dignified and masculine order. An habitual and blus.h.i.+ng timidity of address, of which he was painfully conscious, made him shrink from a free and general intercourse with his fellow-pupils. He had few friends, because his bashful habits had made him fastidious and reserved; but his gentle and una.s.suming deportment, and the invariable sweetness of his temper, endeared him to the few who had penetration enough to discern his real merits; and so far recommended him to all, that the existence of an enemy was impossible.

Thus widely opposite in physical and moral attributes were Florian and Bartholdy; and yet so cordial appeared their attachment, so incessant was their intercourse, that the presiding Jesuits could only solve this psychological enigma by conjecturing that Bartholdy, whose fierce temper and great bodily strength made him detested and shunned by every other boy, had found in the gentle sympathies of the unspoiled and credulous Florian a relief which long habit had made essential to him. It is probable, too, that the often guilty, and ever equivocal Bartholdy, had found a protecting influence in the warm adherence of one whose purity of mind and character were universally acknowledged. His specious reasoning rarely failed to convince the confiding Florian that he was unjustly accused, and on several occasions he was screened from well-merited punishment by the favourable testimony of a friend whose veracity was above all suspicion.

Florian, on the other hand, was flattered by the consciousness of his power to protect one so much feared by all but himself, and whom he thought unjustly persecuted. He was bound to him also by the tie of grat.i.tude, for the protection which he derived from the size and strength of Bartholdy when insulted or aggrieved in the quarrels which so often occur in large seminaries. Gradually, however, this exclusive intercourse with one so generally detested, alienated from Florian the good-will of his schoolfellows. Even the few who had most esteemed him, now shunned his society; and the two friends, finding themselves excluded from all partic.i.p.ation in the sports and feelings of others, became more than ever essential to each other. This enduring intimacy of two beings so opposite had been long watched by the Jesuits who conducted the establishment; but, with their wonted sagacity, they forbore to check this singular friends.h.i.+p; not, however, in the hope of any amelioration in the habits of Bartholdy, but with a view to learn from the unqualified sincerity of Florian what the duplicity of the other would have concealed. Hoping that the trying spectacle of a public execution would make a salutary impression upon the hitherto callous feelings of Bartholdy, the reverend fathers had permitted him and his friend to be present on this awful occasion. Florian, who, at the urgent and often-repeated entreaties of Bartholdy, had applied for this permission, followed him with reluctant steps, and a heart beating with terror, and was prevented only by the jeers and remonstrances of his companion from running back to school, and burying his head under his bed-clothes, until the rush of the excited mult.i.tude, and the deep rolling of the drums and deathbells, had ceased. As usual, however, his complying temper yielded to the persuasion of his plausible and reckless friend, with whom he gained an elevated station, and so near the scaffold as to enable them to discern the features of the hapless criminal. Florian saw him kneel before the headsman; the broad weapon glittered in the sun-beams, and the a.s.sumed firmness of the trembling gazer utterly failed him. An ashy paleness overspread his features; his joints shook with terror; and closing his eyes, he saved himself from falling by clinging to the arm of Bartholdy, who, with unshaken nerves, opened to their full extent his large dull eyes, and glutted his savage curiosity by gazing with intense eagerness on the appalling scene. In a few seconds the severed head fell upon the scaffold; the headsman's a.s.sistant, grasping the matted locks, held it aloft to the gazing crowd; and Bartholdy exclaimed, with heartless indifference, "Come along, Florian! 'tis all over, and capitally done! I would bet a louis that you saw nothing, and yet your face looks as white as if it had left your shoulders. Be more a man, Florian. If thus daunted at the sight of another's execution, how would you face your own, if destined to mount the scaffold?"

"Face my own!" exclaimed Florian, shuddering at the suggestion. "G.o.d forbid! I shall take good care to avoid it."

"Say not so," rejoined Bartholdy; "no man can avoid his doom; and it may be yours or mine to die upon the scaffold. _Avoid it_, indeed! I wish from my soul that you had never uttered those unlucky words. How often do the very evils we most carefully shun fall upon our devoted heads! My mind has been long made up to avoid nothing; and, soon as I become my own master, I will throw myself on the world, and grapple with it boldly. _Avoid_ your destiny, indeed! Beware of using those words again; for, trust me, Florian, they bode no good to you."

The timid Florian felt his blood freeze as he listened; but, recollecting himself, he was about to express his perfect reliance upon the integrity of his life and principles, when he shuddered with new dismay as he recollected the judicial murder of Calas, and considered the complexities of human and circ.u.mstantial evidence. In deep and silent dejection, he walked homeward with his friend. He felt as if his existence had been blighted by some sudden and dreadful calamity; and even fancied that he saw his future fate rising before him in storm and darkness, through which menacing images were indistinctly shadowed.

Bartholdy, meanwhile, appeared as much exhilarated as if returning from a comedy, and amused himself with making sarcastic and ludicrous remarks upon the saddened countenances of the returning spectators.

The lapse of several months gradually weakened the strong hold which the execution, and the strange comments of Bartholdy, had laid upon the imagination of Florian, but they tended to increase the timid indecision of his character, and induced a disposition to endure, in uncomplaining silence, many school annoyances, which more energy of character would have easily repelled. An extraordinary incident, however, gave a new turn to his situation. About six months after the execution, Bartholdy suddenly disappeared from the seminary; and this unaccountable event, by which Florian was the only sufferer, was neither explained nor even alluded to by the reverend fathers. To the scholars, who in vain sought an explanation of this mystery from the friend of Bartholdy, it was for some weeks a subject of wondering conjecture, which soon, however, subsided into indifference with all save Florian. He had lost his only, and, as he firmly believed, his sincerely attached friend and companion; and as this friends.h.i.+p had deprived him of the sympathy of every other schoolfellow, he had now no alternative but to retire within himself, and lean upon his own thoughts and resources. For some time he brooded incessantly upon the strange disappearance of his friend. He recollected that for several days preceding the event, the spirits of Bartholdy were so obviously depressed as to create inquiries, to which his replies were vague and unsatisfactory. Notwithstanding the guarded silence of the reverend fathers, it was evident to Florian that his friend had not absconded from the seminary, as not only his clothes and books, but even his bed, had disappeared with him. One article only remained, which had been left in the custody of Florian. It was a large clasp-knife, of excellent workmans.h.i.+p and finish. The handle was of the purest ivory, wrought in curious devices, and the long blade, which terminated in a sharp point, was secured from closing by a powerful spring, thus serving the double purpose of a knife and dagger. The owner of this remarkable weapon had told Florian that it was precious to him, as the legacy of a near relative, and requested him to take charge of it, from an apprehension that, if discovered in his own possession, it would either be stolen by the boys, or taken from him by the Jesuit fathers. "And now," sighed Florian, as he gazed with painful recollections on the knife, "it is too probably lost to him for ever. But if he is still in being, I may yet see and restore to him his favourite knife; and that I may be always ready to restore it, as well as in remembrance of the owner, I will henceforth always carry it about me."

During the remainder of Florian's stay at the seminary, his thoughts continually reverted to his lost friend, who had, he feared, from a mysterious expression of the presiding Jesuit, met with some terrible calamity. During confession, he had once expressed his grief for the sudden deprivation of his friend, when, to his great surprise, the venerable priest, placing his hand solemnly upon the fair and innocent brow of Florian, exclaimed with fervent emphasis, "Thank G.o.d, my son, that it has so happened!"

Florian often pondered upon these remarkable words, which, until some years after his departure from school, he could never satisfactorily interpret. For a long period he fondly cherished the memory of Bartholdy, and this feeling was prolonged by the knife, which, from habit, he continued to carry about him, even when the lapse of time had reconciled him to the loss of his early friend, and his riper judgment told him that that friend had unworthily imposed upon his credulity, and that the consequences of their exclusive intimacy still exercised a pernicious influence upon his character and his happiness.

About three years after the disappearance of Bartholdy, the guardians of Florian, who had been an orphan from infancy, removed him from the seminary, and placed him as a law-student at the University of D.; but here again, although advantageously introduced and recommended, he found himself a stranger, unheeded, and desolate. His timid and now invincible reserve, which prevented all advances on his part towards a frank and social communion with his fellow-students, chilled that disposition to cultivate his acquaintance, which his graceful person and intelligent physiognomy had excited; while his hesitating indecision, at every trivial and commonplace incident, made him ridiculous to the few who had been won, by his prepossessing exterior, to occasional intercourse.

Thus, amidst numbers of his own age and pursuit, and in the dense population of a city, the timid Florian continued as deficient as a child in all practical acquaintance with society. Without a single friend or a.s.sociate, he acquired the habits of a solitary recluse; and, yielding supinely to what now appeared to him his destiny, he became anxious, disconsolate, and misanthropic. Conscious, however, that in France a sound and comprehensive knowledge of jurisprudence was a frequent avenue to honourable civic appointments, and yet overlooking his own incompetency to make any degree of legal knowledge available for this purpose, he pursued his studies for some years with indefatigable a.s.siduity; and during the last year of his stay at D. his endeavours to insure himself, by acc.u.mulated knowledge, an honourable support, were stimulated by a growing attachment to the lovely daughter of a merchant, through whose agency he drew occasional supplies of money from his guardians.

But even the pa.s.sion of love, which so often rouses the latent powers of the diffident into life and energy, failed to inspire the timid Florian with that external ardour and prompt a.s.siduity so essential to success; and although the fair object of his regard did not appear insensible to his silent and gentle homage, he never could collect resolution to reveal his feelings. His diffidence was increased, too, by the unmeaning gallantry of two young and lively officers of the garrison, who, although precluded by their n.o.bility from marriage with the daughter of a citizen, employed a portion of their abundant leisure in making skirmis.h.i.+ng experiments upon the affections of the lovely Angelique.

While these military b.u.t.terflies were fluttering round the woman he loved, poor Florian, daunted by the painful consciousness of his comparative disadvantages, rarely presumed to enter the villa in which her father resided, about half a league beyond the city gates, and endeavoured to console himself by wandering in a pleasant grove immediately contiguous. Here a majestic elm was endeared to him by the knowledge that his beloved Angelique often took her work to a turf seat beneath its spreading branches. Here, too, he sometimes left a flower, or other silent token of his regard, the ascertained acceptance of which did not, however, encourage him to any decisive measure. At length arrived the autumnal vacation, which closed his academic studies; and he determined to pa.s.s the winter in his native province, where he thought the influence of his guardians, and the favourable testimony of his Jesuit teachers, would procure for him such recommendations as might render his extensive legal knowledge available for his future support.

He proposed to return in the ensuing spring to D.; and should his mistress have stood the test of six months' absence, and still regard him with an eye of favour, he would then openly declare himself. He called upon her father at his counting-house, and after explaining to him the probable advantages of his visit to Normandy, bade him farewell, and hastened with a beating heart to the villa, where he had the good fortune to find his Angelique alone. Always timid and irresolute in her presence, the fear of betraying his feelings on this occasion made him tremble as he approached her. Her young cheek glowed with unaffected blushes, as she observed a confusion which led her to antic.i.p.ate an avowal of his attachment; and when he merely told her that he was going to pa.s.s the winter in Normandy, and had called to say farewell, her fine eyes became humid with the starting tears of sudden and uncontrollable emotion. Yet even this obvious proof of sympathy failed to encourage the timid and ever-doubting Florian. Persuaded that he had nothing but his sincerity to recommend him, he dreaded a repulse; and, pressing with gentle fervour her proffered hand, he hastily quitted the apartment without daring to take another look.

After having secured a place in the diligence for the following morning, he called upon the few acquaintances he had in D., and late in the afternoon repaired with eager haste to the grove behind the abode of Angelique. He had determined that his favourite elm, hitherto the only witness of his love, should become the medium of a more palpable declaration of his feelings than he had hitherto dared to convey.

Intending to carve in the bark the initial letters of his own and his fair one's names within the outline of a heart, he drew from his pocket the ivory clasp-knife of Bartholdy, which, after seven years of faithful custody, he had begun to consider as his own; and, kneeling on the bank of turf, he was enabled, by the sharpness of the point, to cut in deep and firm characters the initials of the name so dear to him. Laying down the knife upon the seat, he gazed, with folded arms, upon the beloved cipher, and fell into one of his accustomed reveries. An hour had thus elapsed, when suddenly he was roused from his dream of bliss by tones of loud and vehement contention at no great distance from the elm.