He had been living thus more than eight years without any thing occurring to disturb the monotony of his life, when one blustering night, a cry from a creature in distress reached his ear, as he sat in his mountain hut, poring over a black-letter folio. Surprised that any one should invade his dangerous premises, and on such a night, he ignited a fragment of resinous wood, and sallied forth. As he descended the path that left his door, and struck into that which wound round a precipitous ledge, the voice came nearer on the blast. Anson shouted loudly to the stranger not to approach, until he reached him, as another step in the dark might be certain destruction. Proceeding hastily onward, he found the traveller standing on the outermost edge of the fearful precipice. The torrent was heard boiling and dashing far below, and the wind swept in eddying blasts round the dizzy cliff. Anson extended his hand to the wanderer, and the blaze of the torch flashed brightly in the faces of both men. Anson riveted his eyes on the features of the stranger, and with a yell of demoniac joy fastened on his throat. It was the miserable Derode, who, in the last stage of poverty, was wandering from the far west, to the sea-board, on foot. In the darkness, he had mistaken the mountain path for a bye-road, which had been described to him as greatly shortening the distance to the village. He quailed beneath the iron grasp of Anson, and struggled to say:—“dreaded man! are you not surfeited with revenge? My ruined daughter!—my murdered son!”
“No!” shouted the infuriated recluse, “my ruined—murdered wife! I see her pale face there—down in the black abyss! she demands the sacrifice! down!”
He hurled the trembling seducer over the precipice, and laughed aloud as the wretch dashed from rock to rock in his descent. A heavy plunge! and the surging torrent closed over the hapless Derode forever!
Anson dwelt on in his gloomy solitude, until his hair became blanched, and the memory of passion and crime had furrowed deep channels in his face. In the summer of 1828, we one day followed a trout stream far up into the mountain, and encountered the old man. Giving him the fruits of our morning sport, and seating ourselves in his hut, we learned from himself the leading incidents of this melancholy story. His eye lighted up with unnatural fire, as he pointed with unsteady finger to the fearful cliff, and said, “there, sir, ’twas from yon projection, I dashed my destroyer into the chasm. The law would call it murder, and I live in daily expectation that the bloodhounds will drag me hence. Well, let them come when they will; from my youth, life has been to me one deep, enduring curse.” We saw him at least once in the summer for many years, and in our last interview with him, we said cheerfully,—“you look quite hale yet, Mr. Anson.” He regarded us steadily for a moment, and said, in a voice that reminded us of Shelley’s Ahasuerus, “I cannot die.” *