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VILLAGE ANNALS.

CHAP. II.

NOTE TO THE EDITOR.

[I cannot permit the continuation of this narrative to go to press without requesting your kind permission to trespass on your space by a few prefatory observations. Whatever may be the interest with which it will be perused, it will not, perhaps, be diminished by the assurance that the tragic incident upon which it is founded is strictly an historical, or at least a traditionary fact. And I am sure that the circumstances will be recognised by many, who will identify them with what they have heard as occurrences, since which but a few generations have passed away. A hint has been thrown out from a quarter, any suggestion coming from which I am bound to respect, that I did wrong in giving the real name of the hero of my tale. If so, I can only deeply regret my indiscretion, which is now irremediable; but the antiquity of the tale the notoriety which the transaction has obtained, and the distinction of the family to which he belonged-whose names are familiar to every one acquainted with the legends of Ulster, induced me to think that any additional publicity my humble efforts could bestow was of very little consequence.]

Reader! have you altogether forgotten the details, which, in a former chapter, I laid before you, or has your interest been sufficiently excited, to make you desire a continuance of them. Have you read the narrative, as an amusing tale that might while away a tedious hour, and then thought no more upon it? or have you felt, that in all its dark and dismal scenes, there was a something in which you might feel a deeper concern than the false and imaginative excitement produced by the mere fictions of romance. It has been but a history of passionpassion such as still is doing its work of misery and death throughout the world.

Look at the scenes I have presented to you, and at those which are acted in the theatre of life-look abroad among your fellow-men, and see if vice does not still array herself in all the borrowed lustre wherewith she would conceal her foul and hideous formlook if the shrine of passion be not still wet with the tears of the deserted and the injured, and the unholy flame upon her altar bedewed with human blood, and the walls of her temple covered with the black catalogue of human suffering. Look then into your own heart, and see if in its dark recesses, there lurk not all those feelings, which need but the magic call of some new

and powerful excitement, to evoke them from their hiding-place, to join in the wild and fiendish revel of cursed and unrestrained excess. Say not, as one of old, "Am I a dog that I should do this thing?" In the bosom of every fallen child of mortality are the elements of passion wilder than what imagination ever yet pourtrayed.

Check then each rising throb of your heart that beats with an unholy pulseRemember what the wisest of men hath said, "He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city."

I now must return to the task I have begun, and complete the melancholy narrative that tradition has handed down, through the generations that have gone by since the period of its events. Many years have elapsed since first, in my childish days, I listened to this tale, and still it is fresh upon my memory, as if I had but heard it yesterday, and its details are vividly present to my mind, as though I had been an eye-witness to them all, and my heart mourns as I take up my pen to write them downchequered as they are by sin and sorrow. Oh! I can never write upon the guilt and misery of my fellow-men, without a tear blotting my paper, as I think of the evil and wretchedness that spreads throughout God's fair world, that world which once its Creator pronounced to be "very good." Once was

it all lovely and fair, and purity and happiness claimed it as their abode, but now all is changed; the roses and the lilies are withered in that which once was the garden of the Lord; the enemy has been there, and desolation marks his traces; and it is now but a howling wilderness. The cries of the fatherless and orphan are borne upon every breeze, and the groans of those who are racked by sickness, or torn by remorse, and the sighs of the slave in his prison-house, and the captive in his dungeon, all attest the bitter consequences of the rebellion of man against his Maker.

Months had rolled on from the evening on which M'Naghten parted with Julia, under the promise of returning in a few hours, and never had they met

since.

Colonel K was violent, but changeable. His anger was easily excited, but was seldom of long duration. Enraged at his daughter's opposition to his desire, that she should unite herself to Lord S the nobleman already alluded to, he had taken his daughter away from those scenes with which were associated her recollections of affection for M'Naghten, in the vain hope, that when absent from these, she might forget him. In obedience to her father's wishes, she returned to him all those pledges of affection which he had bestowed on her, but she could not bring her heart to part with that ring which was the token of his plighted faith. She kept it secretly, and many a bitter tear did she shed over it. Her father loved her ardently and sincerely -and when he saw that the damask had fled from her cheek, and that sorrow was preying upon her soul, he could no longer bear to thwart her wishes. He returned to Glenarm, his beautiful residence near Derry, determined to sacrifice his own ambitious projects to her peace of mind, and resolved, if his daughter should still retain her affection for the object of her former love, to present no furtl er obstacles to their union.

It was almost immediately after his return, that Edmund and Margaret unexpectedly met in the ball-room, and it was with no little surprise, that, on following his daughter to a room where she had been carried in a faint, he found her pale and agitated, and M'Naghten gazing on her with an ex

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pression of the most tender solicitude. M'Naghten's brow darkened as he entered, and Margaret trembled with excess of agitation. The veteran was moved. He held out his hand, and with a voice almost choked by emotion, he said, M'Naghten, can you forgive?" The young officer grasped the proffered hand, and a "soldier's tear" dropped upon it, as he warmly shook it. Yet, even at this melting moment, there was in Edmund's breast a contest between his feelings and his sense of what was right, and to Colonel K's invitation to his mansion, fidelity to Julia at first made him answer in the negative, but when Margaret seconded her father's request by looks more eloquent than angel's words, he could no longer resist the tide of passion that swelled within his soul. He hesitated for a moment, and thought of her whom he had left alone and ruined,—and he wavered still-but just while his resolution was undecided, he perceived on Margaret's finger the brilliant token that reminded him of his vow. It was enough-he yielded to her father's repeated invitations, and that very night, he accompanied them home.

Yet was it not in premeditated infidelity to Julia, that he thus acted-he went to enjoy, as he imagined, the pleasing vision that soon must vanish for ever-to enjoy the society of his beloved one for a few short days, and then, bidding her an eternal farewell, resign himself to one whom he felt he did not love, but to whom a destiny he could not control, had bound him by indissoluble ties. Ah, how often do we charge on our fate those misfortunes, which are the result of our follies, and excuse ourselves by believing, that we acted under influences beyond ourselves

while, in truth, the demon that draws us on in our reckless course, is but the power of our own ungovernable passions.

But did he keep the resolution he had formed? did he tear himself from the idol of his soul, and sacrifice his feelings on the shrine of honour, and fidelity and truth? Need I answer, he did not? A few short days, he had fixed as the limit to his enjoyment of Margaret's society, and then he was to leave her never more to meet on this side the grave, but in those few days his passion gathered strength, until it became his master. As he sat beside

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her, and gazed upon her pale cheek, from which love for him had chased the rosy hue, and as she poured, in the simplicity of confiding love, into his ear the tale of her anxieties and her sorrows, while she pined in absence, and as she explained every thing that might have seemed strange in her conduct, and dwelt upon the love that never once had cooled within her breast, he felt his soul to burn as with fire. And how could he bring himself to say farewell! They know not how potent is the spell of love, who vainly deem that they can quaff the witching cup by measure, and dash, when they please the draught of enchantment from their lips. The pleadings of passion, like the Siren's melody, must not be listened to, or they will too surely and too fatally be obeyed.

Autumn had deepened into winterand the days were nearly at their shortest. It was the dusk of a December evening-the dark clouds fled heavily along the sky, and the blast was whistling through the naked branches of the old trees that surrounded Glenarm. Edmund and Margaret were standing together in the windowed niche of an apartment looking across the waters of the Foyle, as they sullenly reflected in their bosom the blackness of the heavens. Their marriage-day was fixed, which M Naghten had long put off from some undefined dread that rested on his mind-the gloom of a guilty conscience; but all was now set tled, and in one short week, they were to enter on the tenderest relation of which humanity is capable, and Edmund was now standing with his arm round the waist of his betrothed onelooking out on the dreary gloominess of the scene. The withered leaves, the relics of last Autumn's wreck were whirled in wreaths by the eddies of the wind, and here and there a solitary deer was seen bounding across the lawn, and seeking in the nearest thicket a cover from the piercing blast. They observed a horseman riding at a rapid pace along the avenue with a cloak buttoned across his throat, and his face almost entirely concealed. He dismounted at the door, and handing a small packet to the servant, he remounted, and rode off as rapidly as he had come. His motions hardly excited their attention further than as his appearance served to diversify the dull

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monotony of the scene. But a short time after his departure, a summons came to Margaret, to attend her father in his study, and M'Naghten was left to solitude and his own reflections. A considerable time elapsed, and the usual hour of dinner passed unnoticed, M Naghten paced the room, and wondered what could be the cause of her long absence; the shades of night closed deeper in around, but just under the window, he perceived a groom leading his own horse, saddled and bridled, and ready for the road. threw up the window, and eagerly enquired the cause the man answered, that it was by his master's directions. He was confounded, but soon accounted for it by the supposition, that some domestic calamity had occurred, of which intelligence had been brought by the rider he had seen, and that his services were required perhaps to go on some errand as the friend of the family. With a beating heart he hurried to the door of Colonel K's study, and as he knocked, he distinctly recognised inside, the well-known tones of Margaret's voice in earnest expostulation; he knocked again and louder, without an answer, but on his third knock, the door was opened, and he met, just on the threshhold, Margaret, leaning on her father's arm, her eyes streaming with tears; he attempted to grasp her hand, Colonel K dashed his arm aside, and, in a commanding tone, said, “Sir, your business must now be with me, my daughter can no longer meet you as she has done, until you satisfy my mind upon some points which I shall mention to you in private," and with these words he passed rapidly on. Edmund attempted to stop him, but in vain.

He then determined upon following them, and not surrendering even to a father, her whom he now regarded as his own. With a heart throbbing with the pulses of the most violent emotion, he walked quickly after them along the corridor, until they turned off by a door which led to a different wing of the house. Almost in phrenzy, he made a struggle to rush in by the same passage, but here too he was foiled; the nervous arm of the veteran with ease repelled his effort, and before he could recover himself from the effects of the impulse he received, the door through which they went had closed, and he heard the shooting of a ponderous bolt

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in the inside, which effectually barred his arm, he said, “Colonel K this it against his attempts at ingress. is not language to be used to me, and, M'Naghten stood outside the closed by heaven, no man thall use it with door, unable to account for the scene impunity." The other turned calmly through which he had passed. The round, and, though his face was pale corridor was nearly dark, unless when a with anger, he gave no other indication small gleam of light was shed from a of the rage that was swelling in his glimmering lamp that burned at the breast. Young man," said he, with window at its extremity, and struggled dignity," this house is mine, and I with the fading twilight that still cast its command you to leave it. If," he added, dusky gray through the arch. Grief, “I have insulted you, you may seek wonder, and fear, alternately shook his your satisfaction. My years on earth manly breast, as with hurried step he will be but few, and I will risk the rempaced the corridor. He was not left nant of my days ten times over to save long to his suspense. Colonel K my only child from a union with the soon appeared at a different door from man who could lift his arm against her that by which he had gone out: he was father's life." M'Naghten's hand fell alone, and as the gleam from the small heavily upon the hilt of his half-drawn taper which he carried in his hand, fell sword. He turned away in agony, on his features, it revealed the traces The voice of conscience awoke within of deep excitement. "Mr. M Naghten," his breast, and all his guilt and perfidy said he, coldly, "my conduct may ap- were pourtrayed in vivid colours on pear inexplicable, but if you will be so his mind. Stung to phrenzy by the kind as to follow me to my study, per- maddening thoughts of all that he had haps I shall be able to account for it lost, he rushed from the house, and satisfactorily." M'Naghten followed flinging himself upon his waiting steed, with breathless anxiety-Colonel Khe galloped from the door. took up a packet which was lying open on the table, and handing it to him for his perusal, sat down quietly in a chair, and fixed his eye on Edmund to watch the changes of his countenance as he read.

A hasty glance at the first few lines was sufficient to convince M'Naghten of the damning truth. His falsehood and his sin had recoiled upon himself; was his double infidelity discovered; and his hopes of obtaining Margaret's hand were blasted. He quailed before the glance of the indignant father, as with a voice, whose tones anger had elevated beyond the natural pitch, he demanded, "Mr. M'Naghten, is this true?" He answered not. He dashed the hated document, with violence, upon the table. His breathing became quick and gasping, but for no words could he find utterance. The other took up the letter, and cooly folding it, he placed it in his desk. "Mr. M'Naghten," said he, "your horse is at the door-the sooner you leave this the better-my daughter never shall be the wife of a profligate." The old man trembled as he pronounced the words. He walked to the window to conceal the emotion he could not suppress. M'Naghten felt the reeling of madness in his brain. He rushed towards him, and convulsively grasping

Next evening found him slowly pacing along the well-known walks in the demesne of Glenarm, where often he had breathed his vows of love in Margaret's ear. He was alone, and closely muffled in his cloak. The snow flakes were falling thick and fast, and the earth was already covered in a mantle of white. He stood beneath the shelter of an oak, and sighed as he beheld the purity of the driven snow-pure as the soul that guilt has never yet contaminated. He was impatiently looking towards the house, and frequently observed the passing of the minutes as they were noted by his watch. The spot where he stood was one with which many associations were connected. It was a spot where, years before, Margaret and he had formed, with their own hands, a wild garden; and had reared a bed of violets that, on a sunny bank, used to put forth "the earliest blossom of the opening spring." The labour of their youthful days was now covered deep beneath the falling snow; but Edmond knew the spot too well to forget it. And here was the place where, in a few hurried lines, secretly conveyed to her, he had implored of Margaret to meet him on that evening. The hour he had fixed was past, and long had he been waiting in anxious expectancy, and yet she came

not. A thousand excuses for her delay he had framed, and rejected, and his bosom alternately beat high with hope, and was chilled by despair. Now he was about to depart for ever, and again he determined that he would wait a little longer. From the place where he stood he commanded a full view of the house, and often did he gaze earnestly on its walls and pillars as they stood out in dark relief upon the whiteness of every thing around. But there was no sign of any person moving, and the flickering light of a fire sent its unsteady gleam through the window of the apartment where he knew the family usually passed their evenings. He thought he could perceive figures moving in the room, but the distance at which he was, prevented his being certain, and now the shower thickening caused every object to appear indistinct through the haziness of the snow mist. He leaned his head upon the trunk of the tree, and his soul sunk within him. He turned round to give a parting glance, when he thought he perceived, at no great distance, a female form lightly moving towards him. His heart fluttered in his breast -it came nearer-he moved from his concealment-and

a deer bounded, frightened, away, which, covered over with the falling rime, and magnified by the haziness of the medium through which it was seen, had presented to his eyes the appearance of a lady dressed in white. M'Naghten envied the animal as it darted through the snow, and turned to depart for ever from Glenarm; but just then he perceived, in one of the windows of the house, the glimmering of a taper, and, as well as he could distinguish through the murkiness of the atmosphere, it was in Margaret's chamber. Önce more he stopped, and fixed his eye upon that faint ray. In a few minutes it was gone, and every place was dark as before. Oh! with what an intensity of expectation did he now move slowly along the path that led to the house; and how earnestly did he cast his straining gaze through the thickening darkness of the shower. Again he perceives an object moving towards him. He stood for a moment in the concealment of a thicket. The form came nearer-it was a lady wrapped in a cloak. He had not been mistaken-it was Margaret's self. She had come alone to meet him. He

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"It has bound neither," she answered-"it was to me it was sworn, and I absolve you. Go, and bestow your hand-" She could not finish the sen tence, and had not Edmond supported her she would have fallen. He led her to an arbour where there was a partial shelter from the storm. She sunk upon the seat, and gasped for breath.

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Oh, Margaret," he exclaimed, "I swore to my God, and no mortal can absolve me, and I will keep my oath. Come," he continued, "come with me now, and before morning the church shall have joined us beyond the power of man to disunite."

"No," she exclaimed, "No, my promise to my dying mother was, that I would never marry contrary to my father's wish. She asked it of me with lips that were already cold with the chill of the grave, and I gave my promise to her spirit as it was leaving earth. I cannot break it. Tempt me not, but go and give your hand where honour demands it, and leave my heart to break."

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The groan that followed seemed as if it had already rent her heart. M⭑Naghten urged his suit, but it was in vain. She continued firm. "I cannot, she said, "break my word to a dying parent. I think," she said, "I think I can see her lying on her death-bed, and her ashy lips quivering as she scarce could dictate the promise that binds me, and God give me strength to keep it." She clasped her hands, and looked up in prayer to him who hath said, "honour thy father and thy mother;" and oh! if ever prayer for strength to help in time of need was considered by him who heareth prayer, it surely was not in a woman's strength that she overcome a woman's weakness, and resisted the temptation that assailed

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