The very place
where he had met this singular person was desecrated, as it were, and
unhallowed, owing to many violent deaths, both in duels and by suicide,
which had in former times taken place there; and the place which he had
named as a rendezvous at so late an hour, was held in general to be
accursed, from a frightful and cruel murder which had been there
committed by the wretch from whom the place took its name, upon the
person of his own wife.*
* Note G. Muschat's Cairn.
It was in such places, according to the belief of that period (when the
laws against witchcraft were still in fresh observance, and had even
lately been acted upon), that evil spirits had power to make themselves
visible to human eyes, and to practise upon the feelings and senses of
mankind. Suspicions, founded on such circumstances, rushed on Butler's
mind, unprepared as it was by any previous course of reasoning, to deny
that which all of his time, country, and profession believed; but common
sense rejected these vain ideas as inconsistent, if not with possibility,
at least with the general rules by which the universe is governed,--a
deviation from which, as Butler well argued with himself, ought not to be
admitted as probable, upon any but the plainest and most incontrovertible
evidence. An earthly lover, however, or a young man, who, from whatever
cause, had the right of exercising such summary and unceremonious
authority over the object of his long-settled, and apparently sincerely
returned affection, was an object scarce less appalling to his mind, than
those which superstition suggested.
Pages:
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224