1 "It is he!" was the instant exclamation of the youth as he beheld him. "It is he, Macnab, the Scotchman, the man that murdered Major Spencer!" Macnab for it was he was deadly pale. He trembled like an aspen. His eyes were dilated with more than mortal apprehension, and his lips were perfectly livid. Still, he found strength to speak and to deny the accusation. He knew nothing of the youth before him, nothing of Major Spencer, his name was Macleod, and he had never called himself by any other. He denied, but with great incoherence, everything which was urged against him. - "You must get up, Mr. Macleod," said the captain; "the circumstances are very much against you. You must go with the officer!" "Will you give me up to my enemies?" demanded the culprit. "You are a countryman -a Briton. I have fought for the king, our master, against these rebels, and for this they seek my life. Do not deliver me into their bloody hands!" "Liar!" exclaimed James Grayling. "Didn't you tell us at our own camp fire that you were with us? that you were at Gates' defeat and Ninety-six '?" "But I didn't tell you," said the Scotchman, with a grin, "which side I was on!" "Ha! remember that!" said the sheriff's officer. "He denied, just a moment ago, that he knew this young man at all; now he confesses that he did see and camp with him." The Scotchman was aghast at the strong point which, in his inadvertence, he had made against himself; and his efforts to excuse himself, stammering and contradictory, served only to involve him more deeply in the meshes of his difficulty. Still he continued his urgent appeals to the captain of the vessel. One or two of the passengers, indeed, joined with him in entreating the captain to set the accusers adrift and make sail at once; but the stout Englishman who was in command rejected instantly the unworthy counsel. Besides, he was better aware of the dangers which would follow any such rash proceeding. Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan's Island, had been already refitted and prepared for an enemy; and he was lying at that moment under the formidable range of grinning teeth, which would have opened upon him, at the first movement, from the jaws of Castle Pinckney. 66 'No, gentlemen," said he, "you mistake your man. God forbid that I should give shelter to a murderer, though he were from my own parish.' "But I am no murderer," said the Scotchman. "You look cursedly like one, however," was the reply of the captain. "Sheriff, take your prisoner. Steward," he cried, "bring up this man's luggage.' He was obeyed. The luggage was brought up from the cabin and delivered to the sheriff's officer, by whom it was examined in the presence of all, and an inventory made of its It consisted of a small new trunk, which, it afterwards appeared, he had bought in Charleston, soon after his arrival. This contained a few changes of raiment, twenty-six guineas in money, a gold watch, not in repair, and the two pistols which he had shown while at Joel Sparkman's camp fire; but, with this difference, that the stock of one was broken off short just above the grasp, and the butt was entirely gone. It was not found among his chattels. A careful examination of the articles in his trunk did not result in anything calculated to strengthen the charge of his criminality; but there was not a single person present who did not feel as morally certain of his guilt as if the jury had already declared the fact. That night he slept if he slept at all-in the common jail of the city. -- as soon as His accuser, the warm-hearted and resolute James Grayling, did not sleep, and with the dawn he was again up and stirring, with his mind still full of the awful business in which he had been engaged. We do not care to pursue his course in the ordinary walks of the city, nor account for his employments during the few days which ensued. Macnab or Macleod,and it is possible that both names were fictitious, he recovered from his first terrors, sought the aid of an attorney -one of those acute, small, chopping lawyers to be found in almost every community, who are willing to serve with equal zeal the sinner and the saint, provided that they can pay with equal liberality. The prisoner was brought before the court under habeas corpus, and several grounds submitted by his counsel with the view to obtaining his discharge. It became necessary to ascertain, among the first duties of the state, whether Major Spencer, the alleged victim, was really dead. Until it could be established that a man should be imprisoned, tried, and punished for a crime, it was first necessary to show that a crime had been committed; and the attorney made him self exceedingly merry with the ghost story of young Grayling. In those days, however, the ancient Superstition was not so feeble as she has subsequently become. The judge who it must be understood was a real existence, and who had no small reputation in his day in the south -proceeded to establish the correctness of his opinions by authorities and argument, with all of which, doubtlessly, the bar were exceedingly delighted; but to provide them in this place would only be to interfere with our own progress. James Grayling, however, was not satisfied to wait the slow processes which were suggested for coming at the truth. Even the wisdom of the judge was lost upon him, possibly for the simple reason that he did not comprehend it. But the ridicule of the culprit's lawyer stung him to the quick, and he muttered to himself, more than once, a determination "to lick the life out of that impudent chap's leather." But this was not his only resolve. There was one which he proceeded to put into instant execution, and that was to seek the body of his murdered friend in the spot where he fancied it might be found — namely, the dark and dismal bay where the specter had made its appearance to his eyes. The suggestion was approved - though he did not need this to prompt his resolution - by his mother and uncle, Sparkman. The latter determined to be his companion, and he was further accompanied by the sheriff's officer who had arrested the suspected felon. Before daylight, on the morning after the examination before the judge had taken place, and when Macleod had been remanded to prison, James Grayling started on his journey. His fiery zeal received additional force at every added moment of delay, and his eager spurring brought him at an early hour after noon to the neighborhood of the spot through which his search was to be made. He led them round it, taking the very course which he had pursued the night when the revelation was made him; he showed them the very tree at whose foot he had sunk when the supernatural torpor - as he himself esteemed it began to fall upon him; he then pointed out the spot, some twenty steps distant, at which the specter made its appearance. To this spot they then proceeded in a body, and essayed an entrance, but were so discouraged by the difficulties at the outset that all, James not excepted, concluded that neither the murderer nor his victim could possibly have found entrance there. VOL. XXIII. - 13 |