The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector. William Carleton

artful girl being no other than Alice Goodwin, aided and abetted by her family. Every circumstance, no matter how trivial, that could be raked up and collected, was now brought together, and stamped with a character of significance, in order to establish his dotage and their fraud. It is not necessary to dwell upon this. In due time the matter came to a trial, for the will had been disputed, and, after a patient hearing, its validity was completely established, and all the hopes and expectations of the Lindsays blown into air.

      In the meantime, and while the suit was pending, the conduct of Alice was both generous and disinterested. She pressed her parents to allow her, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, to renounce the bequest, inasmuch as she thought that Mr. Hamilton's relatives had a stronger and prior claim. This, however, they peremptorily refused to do.

      “I care not for money,” said her father, “nor have I much to spare; but you must consider, my dear Alice, that the act upon the part of Mr. Hamilton was a spontaneous demise of his own property, as a reward to you on behalf of his daughter, for the affection which you bore her, and which subsisted between you. You were her nurse, her friend, her sister; you tended her night and day during her long illness, even to the injury of your health, and almost at the risk of your very life. Suppose, for instance, that Mr. Hamilton had had male heirs; in that case, the Lindsays would have been just as they are, perhaps not so well; for he might not have left them even a legacy. Then, they unjustly tax us with fraud, circumvention, and the practice of undue influence; and, indeed, have endeavored to stamp an indelible stain upon your character and honor. Every man, my dear, as the proverb has it, is at liberty to do what he pleases with his own, according to his free will, and a reasonable disposition. Let me hear no more of this, then, but enjoy with gratitude that which God and your kind friend have bestowed upon you.”

      We need not assure our readers that the Lindsays henceforth were influenced by an unfriendly feeling toward the Goodwins, and that all intercourse between the families terminated. On the part of Mrs. Lindsay, this degenerated into a spirit of the most intense hatred and malignity. To this enmity, however, there were exceptions in the family, and strong ones, too, as the reader will perceive in the course of the story.

      Old Lindsay himself, although he mentioned the Goodwins with moderation, could not help feeling strongly and bitterly the loss of property which his children had sustained, owing to this unexpected disposition of it by their uncle. Here, then, were two families who had lived in mutual good-will and intimacy, now placed fronting each other in a spirit of hostility. The Goodwins felt indignant that their motives should be misinterpreted by what they considered deliberate falsehood and misrepresentation; and the Lindsays could not look in silence upon the property which they thought ought to be theirs, transferred to the possession of strangers, who had wheedled a dotard to make a will in their favor. Such, however, in thousands of instances, are the consequences of the

       “Opes irritamenta malorum.”

      The above facts, in connection with these two families, and the future incidents of our narrative, we have deemed it necessary, for I the better understanding of what follows, to place in a preliminary sketch before our readers.

CHAPTER II. A Murderer's Wake and the Arrival of a Stranger

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      It is the month of June, and the sun has gone down amidst a mass of those red and angry clouds which prognosticate a night of storm and tempest. The air is felt to be oppressive and sultry, and the whole sky is overshadowed with gloom. On such a night the spirit sinks, cheerfulness abandons the heart, and an indefinable anxiety depresses it. This impression is not peculiar to man, who, on such occasions, is only subject to the same instinctive apprehension which is known to influence the irrational animals. The clouds are gathering in black masses; but there is, nevertheless, no opening between them through which the sky is visible. The gloom is unbroken, and so is the silence; and a person might imagine that the great operations of Nature had been suspended and stood still. The outlying cattle betake them to shelter, and the very dogs, with a subdued and timid bark, seek the hearth, and, with ears and tail hanging in terror, lay themselves down upon it as if to ask protection from man. On such a night as this we will request the reader to follow us toward a district that trenches upon the foot of a dark mountain, from whose precipitous sides masses of gray rock, apparently embedded in heath and fern, protrude themselves in uncouth and gigantic shapes. 'Tis true they were not then visible; but we wish the reader to understand the character of the whole scenery through which we pass. We diverge from the highway into a mountain road, which resembles the body of a serpent when in motion, going literally up one elevation, and down another. To the right, deep glens, gullies, and ravines; but the darkness with which they are now filled is thick and impervious to the eye, and nothing breaks the silence about us but the rush of the mountain torrent over some jutting precipice below us. To the left all is gloom, as it would be even were there light to guide the sight, because on that side spreads a black, interminable moor. As it is we can see nothing; yet as we get along we find that we are not alone. Voices reach our ears; but they are not, as usual, the voices of mirth and laughter. These which we hear—and they are not far from us—are grave and serious; the utterance thick and low, as if those from whom they proceed were expressing a sense of sympathy or horror. We have now advanced up this rugged path about half a mile from the highway we have mentioned, and discovered a light which will guide us to our destination. As we approach the house the people are increasing in point of numbers; but still their conversation is marked by the same strange and peculiar character. Perhaps the solemn depth of their voices gains something by the ominous aspect of the sky; but, be this as it may, the feeling which it occasions fills one with a different and distinct sense of discomfort.

      We ourselves feel it, and it is not surprising; for, along this wild and rugged path of darkness, we are conducting the reader to the wake of a murderer. We have now arrived within fifty yards of the house, which, however, we cannot see, for nothing but a solitary light is visible. But, lo! a flash of lightning! and there for a moment is the whole rugged and savage scenery revealed. The huge, pointed mountains, the dreary wastes, the wild, still glens, the naked hills of granite, and the tremendous piles of rocks, ready, one would think, to crash down from the positions where they seem to hang, if only assailed by a strong gale of wind—these objects, we say, were fearful and startling in themselves; but the sensations which they produced were nothing in comparison with the sight of an unpainted deal coffin which stood near the door, against the side wall of the house. The appearance of a coffin, but especially at night, is one that casts a deep shadow over the spirits, because it is associated with death, of which it is the melancholy and depressing exponent; but to look upon it by such an awful though transient light as that which proceeds from the angry fires of heaven, and to reflect upon the terrible associations of blood and crime which mingle themselves with that of a murderer, is a dreadful but wholesome homily to the heart. We now enter the house of death, where the reader must suppose himself to be present, and shall go on to describe the scene which presents itself.

      On entering, we found the house nearly crowded; but we could observe that there were very few of the young and light-hearted present, and scarcely any females, unless those who were related to the family of the deceased, or to himself. The house was low and long, and the kitchen in which they had laid him out was spacious, but badly furnished. Altogether its destitution was calculated to deepen the sense of awe which impressed those who had come to spend the night with the miserable widow and wailing orphans of the murderer.

      The unfortunate man had been executed that morning after having acknowledged his crime, and, as the laws of that period with respect to the interment of the convicted dead were not so strict as they are at present, the body was restored to his friends, in order that they might bury it when and where they wished. The crime of the unhappy man was deep, and so was that which occasioned it. His daughter, a young and beautiful girl, had been seduced by a gentleman in the neighborhood who was unmarried; and that act of guilt and weakness on her part was the first act that ever brought shame upon the family. All the terrible passions of the father's heart leaped into action at the rain of his child, and the disgrace