LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 844, 8 March 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A NIGHT OF EMOTIONS. BY DUDLEY WINTHROP MOOKE, (Danebury News) WIIKN I was a student in one of the hospitals of London, a young woman belonging to one of the lower classes of society was added to the number of our patients. She was re markably pretty and interesting—this, together with the strangeness of the case, roused all our sympathies. Notwithstanding our strenuous efforts, we found it impossible to save her from the jaws of grim death. Her malady baffled many a learned head and brought our curiosity and wonder to a very high pitch. Her symptoms were so variable, that soon after we had administered what Ave hoped were the proper remedies, and were secretly rejoicing at a supposed success, they would suddenly change and again leave u-* floundering in a sea of perplex ties. Some of the physicians declared that she was attacked with some unknown pulmonaiy complaint; others affirmed that it was an afflux of blood to the heart, others an internal abscess, the seat of which could not be discovered A thousand other conjectures were formed. It naturally followed that none agreed; and all the while the poor girl was being dosed with drugs of all descriptions. But little by little her life was wasting away amid intense suffering. She was very quiet and patient, which angelic resignation to a painful destiny made us pity her sufferings all the more.

Here was a powerful enigma to unriddle, and many were the lucubrations the old and young heads had tog ther, which resulted in much unprofitable talk, severe headaches, and more and more perplexed brain.

Meanwhile the parents of the young girl were notified of her approaching death. It is probable that they feared the doctors would make an autopsy of the corpse were she left to die at the hospital, for they lost no time in presenting themselves, :<nd insisted on removing the girl at once, notwithstanding that we assured them such a procedure would conduce to a still quicker ending of her days. They turned a deaf car to our counsels. Two brothers of the young girl, who had come with the parents, were extremely loud in their denunciation, not only of our treatment, but of our hospital. They called us all assassins, and had it not been for our superior strength in numbers, without doubt some of us would have suffered rough usage at their hands.

A young student, Merval by name, becoming enraged at their rude language, Avould have showered some vigorous blows on their heads, had not I, who always was a timely mediator, stepped between the antagonists, and soothed them with a little of my eloquence. Well, as it was, they left us, taking with them the poor patient whom they intended to convey to their homes, several leagues from London. The day subsequent to the departure, we learned, not to our surprise, but on the contrary, that the girl had died on reaching home, and had been buried in the cemetery at Wimbledon.

This news led to several secret meetings among ourselves. We became dangerous conspirators, selecting as a password the trisyllable ' Autopsy.' To be more concise, two days succeeding the interment at Wimbledon, four students and a good-natured Irishman, called Mike — the errand porter at the hospital—had made very precautionary arrangements for the most solemn exhumation of a new corpse. [The reader cannot delay in comprehending what corpse I allude.] Perhaps a succiut description of the respective members of the nocturnal expedition might be gratifying, so let me to work.

Fust, there was Merval—llichard Mcrval—a good-hearted sort of a chap, with good looks, tall figure, much talk—superior ' gift of gab'—to speak more honestly, and with sufficient money to make a jolly student; secondly, Ernest Chinch, with looks between the pood and the bad, small of figure, but large at heart, with a small amount of talk, and insufficient money to make him as jolly a student as he aspired to be; thirdly, Alfred Cone, :>, pleasing fellow-, will) plenty of wit, without much flesh or money the heir of a curate; fourthly, my humble self, with lots of modesty ami with a ready hand when modesty was to be forgotten ; and, lastly, the above-mentioned Mike, an honest specimen of the Hibernian race, with a proneness to look a rum bottle full in the mouth without intimidation, and with an undeniable proneness to do a

considerable share of nothing and to keep a flat palm at the sight of gold or silver, am; to close that palm the moment those metals touched it.

Well, I said our arrangements had beei made with care. We had received exac information as to the spot where the gravi would be found. We crammed ourselvesinto the coach we had hired for the occa sion, having been careful to provide ourselves with a large sack to wrap the corpse in, ano with the instruments necessary for unearthing the coffin and prying open the lid. Mike had nestled, more appropriately jammed, himself in one corner of th< vehicle, with a bottle of rum under each arm and a crowbar and the sack between his long legs. There he sat, looking the picture of darkness. His courage had already begun to fail him, and the bottle alone was his source of comfort. However, as his libations became more copious, his spirits rose, and he grew alarmingly defiant, braving all the ghosts and skeletons in the world.

We started at nine o'clock in the evening for our disagreeable destination. The weather was unpleasant -now it rained, now it cleared off a little, showing us a pale, sickly moon through large, ragged clouds. This guardian of the heavens seemed to frown upon us a moment, then it would disappear again, leaving us in tutal obscurity. Mike was noisy along the first part of the route, but when we neared the old Wimble don Church, where our coach was to stop, his loquacity somewhat subsided and his previous defiant enthusiasm lost its fire—the coals had begun to die out. When our vehicle at length came to a standstill in a by-way approximate to the cemetery, I must confess the rest of us had a very small share of ardor left. Inside the coach all was as still as death.

And Mike, he was intoxicated ! At all events, his mind was none too lucid !

The Wimbledon clock was striking midnight. ' Come, Mike,' I cried, ' you must get out.'

'Out, sir, get out? Certainly. Did ye spake, sir?' 'Come, come, my man,' I resumed, impatiently, ' we have no time to lose.' ' It's cauld, your honors,' replied Mike, with a shiver. ' Indade an' it's cauld.'

I gave him a thrust with the crowbar, whereupon he rubbed his shins and re peated his meteorological observation, gave vent to one or two grunts, and began to snore, which we soon put a stop to by dragging him by main force from the coach.

When he felt the cold atmosphere of the night he was either dead or frozen, but we did not pause to listen to him further, and making him shoulder the crowbar and sack, pushed him ahead of us, leaving the coachman in charge of the vehicle. We had not proceeded many yards when the Irishman stopped short, let the crowbar and sack fall to the ground, and set up a most unearthly howl. The blood forsook our faces.

' Silence ! silence !' whispered Mike, after he had howled loud enough to rouse the whole neighbourhood. 'By me soul, there's somcthin' here !'

We stopped and listened, but could distinguish no sound save that made by the bats which were hying over our heads. ' 'Pon me soul, 'pon me soul !' Mike went on, ' I heard a n ise by the hedge. 'Oh ! little gintlemen, stop right here—go no farther, and lave the dead by themselves 1'

In response I gave him a vigorous kick, and made him pick up what he had dropped in his fright, and we resumed our gloomy inarch.

It had begun to rain, which added still more to our wretchedness.

Finally, after receiving many bruises in stumbling over the innumerable stones that obstructed our path, we reached the wall of the cemetery, which we had to scale.

After a long argument and great waste of breath, we induced the son of Hibernia to scale it iirst in order to make a sort of reconnaissance from the top. We soon had the pleasure of seeing him straddling the wall. Bat he had scarcely attained his graceful position, when a Hash of lightning rent the sky, followed by a deafening peal of thunder. A heavy object fell at our feet, and the small stones (lew in all directions. My iirst and rather hasty impression was that a thunderbolt had struck the earth in our proximity, but I was soon brought face to face with the truth. Mike was rolling and writhing on the ground before us, and calling upon all the bones of Saint Patrick to bear witness that he had nothing to do with the dark expedition. After many groans and lamentations, the Irishman, who was more terrified than hurt, regained his feet, and without further accident our party scaled the wall and entered the cemetery. Before we had proceeded far in quest of the new grave, Ernest Church remarked that the two formidable brothers might be on the watch, at which Mike nigh lost his balance once more.

Nothing moved in the dismal place, but the lightning Hashed at intervals, showing forked flames in our path ami illumining the blackened tombs, making the surroundings still more ghostly, and showing our little army, trembling with cold and fear, on its way to consummate the sacrilege. The feeling of uneasiness that took possession of me, and the pangs of remorse Avhich awoke within me, are still vivid in my memory. We found the grave without difficulty. The rain and icy coldness of the atmosphere had benumbed us completely. We about emptied our bottles, and as Mike's courage had sadly wilted, he was tempted to imbibe more nun, which new libation drove all recollection of the place lie was in out of his head, and caused him to forget all the perils of the operation into which we Avere leading hini. In the twinkle of an eye, he untied his sack, took out the implement;;, and set to work with incredible energy. We assisted him with a will, but did not perform as much work as he. The rain ceased, the lightning no longer licked the heavenshut the thunder rumbled, as it rolled away in the did-jneo, as though the celestial ajigor had thrown its anathema upou us [can the depths of the clouds. The obscurity was complete. By dint of hard digging we had, meanwhile, cleared away about three feet of earth. But this waa only half of our task.

' Oh ! by the bones of Saint Patrick !' cried Mike, suddenly, 'it'll be eight o'clock in the mom in' afore we're over wid this !"

We were in the worst of humors, and had begun to curse our scientific Don Quixotism, ivhen a sudden noise, which seemed to proceed from a spot very near to us, arrested >ur attention. Each of us let his implement Ir'ip, and for one or two minutes we renamed mute with apprehension. We could ■scarcely see our hand before our face, but a iuld hear the sound of approaching footteps upon the sod. Another unnecessary alarm ! The soli bary promenadcr was simply an ass, which ••some economic farmer had locked in the cemetery. In less than half an hour our feet struck the lid of the coffin, and shortly thereafter it was raised from the ground. New fright! The footsteps of a man ; a human voice was heard. Both sounds we heard distinctly. There could be no mistake ! Terrified, we crouched upon the ground, and with anxious faces waited. Five or six minutes elapsed ; all was still again. We breathed more freely. The most formidable part of our sacrilegious enterprise was not accomplished yet. We worked courageously. Having once more looked about us through the gloom, we wrenched the lid from the coffin, and the white moon, which appeared at that moment, threw its pale light full upon the poor inhabitant of this last abode. We were already raising the corpse, when Ernest exclaimed, letting it fall—'We are lost ! They are here !'

His hand, which he had placed on my shoulder, trembled violently. L looked in the direction his eyes were riveted, and but too distinctly espied a man, if not two, advancing stealthfully along the wall. ' We are discovered !' I cried as composedly as possible. ' They will murder us !' resumed Ernest. * Hand me my pistol,' said Merval, ' that I may have a ball to defend myself with.' Mike had heard our frightful colloquy. His face breathed horror. I believe I could have laughed, even at that critical moment, at the aspect of his little black, glistening eyes, at the aspect of his pug nose, which the moon silvered. And to add to his ludicrous appearance, his mouth w r as wide open, displaying a double row of white teeth, which knocked together with a sound similar to that caused by hail falling on a window pane. ' Hush ! hush !' I whispered, cocking my pistol. Merval followed my example. To give us the ' finishing stroke, the moon seemed to take sides against us and robbed us of the rest of feeble light she had distributed to us with such avarice. Before retiring behind her alcove of clouds, she allowed us to see another man who was advancing from an opposite direction. ' We are surrounded !' some one cried.

We sprung from the ground wrapped in such obscurity that we could not see one another.

' Where are they ?' called a harsh voice. 'I am certain that I hear them ? Ah, ah ! there they are ! there they are ! Do answer !'

This was enough ; we scampered off in all directions, like grape shot tired from the mouth of a cannon. I heard an explosion, and without knowing whither I went, I was springing over the tombs, now slipping and rolling on the wet sod, now running against a sculptured stone, ever followed by the footsteps of a man, and feeling his breath on my shoulder, but not knowing whether it was friend or foe. At last, I came into violent contact with an iron railiug, which stopped me short. I got rownd it, and finding it open on both sides, doubled myself up and concealed myself under the cover of a vast monumental stone on the inside.

I no longer heard the footsteps of the person who had followed me ; a stilled cry, a hollow groan, the noise made by a body striking the water—a sort of rumbling noise made by a man in deadly struggle, attracted my attention. Without doubt, one of my comrades had been wounded. But what could Ido ? I did not even know on which side he was.

The low moans continued. The night was dark. It would be impossible for me to foi - get that hour. I dragged myself slowly over the wet sod, over the moss, through the branches of the trees, not daring to breathe even—crawling on my hands and knees, and not knowing whether a second pistol shot would send a ball through my head or not. A line position, really ! What has become of my comrades? Shall I be forced to wait for daybreak, in such a plight ? In line, what is to be done ? These questions Hashed through my brain. I had began to grow astonished at the repose and profound silence that then seemed to prevail about me, when the same paddling and gurgling noise again drew my attention. It seem to come from some place near by. I could distinguish the sound of a strangled voice-I could distinguish voices—l listened. (To be continued.)