Clarian's Picture: A Legend of Nassau Hall

“Turbine raptus ingenii.” —SCALIGER.

[Concluded.]

THE next morning there was queer talk about Clarian. Mac and I stared at each other when we heard it at breakfast, but still kept our own counsel in silence. Some late walkers had met him in the moonlight, crossing the campus at full speed, hatless, dripping wet, and flying like a ghost.

“ I tell you,” said our informant, a good enough fellow, and one not prone to be violently startled, “ he scared me, as he flitted past. His eyes were like saucers, his hair wet and streaming behind him, his face white as a chalk-mark on Professor Cosine’s blackboard. Depend on it, that boy ’s either going mad or has got into some desperate scrape.”

“ Pshaw ! ” growled Mac, “ you were drunk,— couldn’t see straight.”

“ Mr. Innocence was returning from some assignation, I suspect,” remarked Zoile.

“ If he had been, you'd have encountered him, Mr. Zoile,” said Mac, curtly.

But I noticed my chum did not like this new feature in the case.

After this, until the time of my receiving the lad's invitation, I neither saw nor had communication with Clarian, nor did any others of us. If he left his room, it was solely at night; he had his meals sent to him, under pretence of illness, and admitted no one, except his own servant. This fellow, Dennis, spoke of him as looking exceedingly feeble and ill; and also remarked that he had apparently not been to bed for some days, but was mixing colors, or painting, the whole time. I went to his door several times, but was invariably refused admittance, and told, kindly, but firmly, that he would not be interrupted. Mac also tried to see him, but in vain.

“ I caught a glimpse of that boy’s face at his window just now,” said he, one day, coming in after recitation. “ You may depend upon it, there’s something terribly wrong. My God, I was horrified, Ned ! Did you ever see any one drown ? No? Well, I did once,—a woman. She fell overboard from a Chesapeake steamboat in which I was coming up the Bay, and sank just before they reached her. I shall never forget her looks as she came up the last time, turned her white, despairing, death-stricken face towards us, screamed a wild nightmare scream, and went down. Clarian’s face was just like hers. Depend upon it, there’s something wrong. What can we do ? ”

Nothing, indeed, save what we did, — wait, until that pleasant morning came round and brought me Clarian’s note. I could scarcely brook the slow laziness with which the day dragged by, as if it knew its own beauty, and lingered to enjoy it. At last, however, the night came, the hour also, and punctually with it came Dr. Thorne, a kindly young physician, and a man of much promise, wellread, prompt, clear-headed, resourceful, and enthusiastically attached to his profession. Mac tucked a volume of Shakspeare under his arm, and we made our way to Clarian’s room forthwith. Here we found about a dozen students, all known to us intimately. They were seated close to one another, conversing in low tones, and betraying upon their faces quite an anxiety of expectation. The door of the bedroom was closed, the curtain was lowered, and the only light in the room came from a shaded lamp, which was placed upon a small table in the recess to the right of the picture.

“What is this for ? ” inquired Dr. Thorne, pointing to a sort of salver resting upon a low tripod directly in front of the picture.

“ Where is Clarian ? ” asked I.

“ He looks awful,” some one began in a whisper, when the lad’s feeble voice called out from the bedroom, —

“ Is it Ned and Mac ? ”

The door was pulled open, aud Clarian came towards us.

“I am glad to see you, my friends. Dr. Thorne, you are truly welcome. Pray, be seated. Mac, here is your place, you and your Shakspeare,” said he, indicating the chair and table in the recess.

I had held out my hand to the lad, but he turned away without taking it, and began to adjust the cords that moved the curtain.

“ The tripod, Dr. Thorne,” said he, with a sickly smile, “is a — a mere fancy of mine, — childish, — but in the salver I shall burn some pyrotechnic preparations, while the picture is being exhibited, by way of substitute for daylight. Excuse me a moment,” added he, as he went into the bedroom again.

“ Blount,” said Dr. Thorne, in my ear, “ why have you permitted this ? What ails that boy ? If he is not cared for soon, he will go crazy. Hush! — here he comes, — keep your eye on him.”

Then, as Clarian came out, and stood in the bedroom doorway, quite near me, I remarked the terrible change since I had last seen him. He leaned against the door-frame, as if too weak to support himself erect; and I saw that his knees shook, his hands jerked, and his mouth twitched in a continual nervous unrest. He had on a handsome robe de chambre of maroon velvet, which he seldom wore about college, though it was very becoming to him, its long skirts falling nearly to his feet, while its ample folds were gathered about his waist, and secured with cord and tassel. His feet were thrust into neat slippers, and his collar rolled over a flowing black cravat àla Corsaire. His long hair, which was just now longer than usual, was evenly parted in the middle, like a girl’s, and, Combed out straight, fell down to his shoulders on either side. All this care and neatness of dress made the contrast of his face stand out the more strikingly. Its pallor was ghastly: no other word conveys the idea of it. His lips kept asunder, as we see them sometimes in persons prostrated by long illness, and the nether one quivered incessantly, as did the smaller facial muscles near the mouth. His eyes were, sunken and surrounded by livid circles, but they themselves seemed consuming with the dry and thirsty fire of fever: hot, red, staring, they glided ever to and fro with a snake-like motion, as uncertain, wild, and painful, in their unresting search, as those of a wounded and captive hawk. The same restlessness, approaching in violence the ceaseless spasmodic habit of a confirmed Chorea, betrayed itself in all his movements, particularly in a way he had of glancing over his shoulder with a stealthy look of apprehension, and the frequent starts and shivers that interrupted him when talking. His voice also was changed, and in every way he gave evidence not only of disease of mind and body, but of a nervous system shattered almost beyond hope of reaction and recovery. Trembling for him, I rose and attempted to speak with him aside, but he waived me off, saying, with that sickly smile which I had never before seen him wear,——

“No, Ned, — you must not interrupt me to-night, neither you nor the rest, — for I am very weak and nervous and ill, and just now need all my strength for my picture, which, as it has cost me labor and pain, — much pain, — I wish to show in its best light. Macbeth’s terror — it means more than it did the other night, Ned — but”—

Here he murmured an inarticulate word or two, recovering himself almost instantly, however, and resuming in a stronger voice,—

“ Macbeth's doom is my picture. You will wonder I preferred the solid wall to canvas, perhaps,— but so did the genuine old artists. Lippo Lippi, and Giotto, and—why, Orcagna painted on graveyard walls; and I can almost fancy, sometimes, that this room is a vault, a tomb, a dungeon, where they torture people. Turn to the place, good Mac, Shakspeare’s tragedy of 'Macbeth,’ Act Third, Scene Fourth, and read the scene to us, as you know how to read ; I will manage the accompaniments.”

As he spoke, he touched the salver with a lighted match, so that a blue alcoholic flame flickered up before the curtain, making the poor lad’s face seem more ghastly than ever.

“ You must sit down, Clarian,” cried Dr. Thorne, resolutely.

Clarian smiled again, that dim, uncertain smile, and answered,—

“ Nay, Doctor, let me have my own way for an hour, and after that you shall govern me as your learned skill suggests. And do not be uneasy about my 'creamfaced’ aspect, as I see Ned is: there is plentiful cause for it, beyond the feebleness of this very present, and to-night is not the first time I have worn these 'linen cheeks.’ Read on, Mac.”

We sat there in the dim light, breathless, awed,— for all of us saw the boy’s agony, and were the more shocked that we were unable to understand it, — until, at last, in a voice made more impressive by its tremor, Mac began to read the terrible text,—to read as I bad never heard him read before, until a fair chill entered our veins and ran back to our shuddering hearts from sympathy. Then, as he read on and painted the king and murderer together, while his voice waxed stronger and fuller, we saw Clarian step forward to the salver and busy with its lambent flame, till it blazed up with a broad, red light, that, shedding a weird splendor upon all around, and lending a supernatural effect to the room’s deep shadows, the picture’s funereal aspect, and the unearthly pallor of the boy’s countenance, startled our eyes like the painful glare of midnight lightning.

As the reader thrust the terror of these words upon us, all started back, for the curtain was plucked suddenly away, and there before us, not in Clarian’s picture, it seemed, but in very truth, stood Macbeth, conscious of the murdered presence. Even the reader, absorbed as he was in his text, paused short, amazed; and I forgot that I had seen this picture, only knew that it was a living scene of terror. Doubtless much of this startling effect was the result of association, the agitation of anxiety, the influence of the impressive text, the suddenness of the apparition, the unusual light; but in the figure of Macbeth, at which alone we gazed, there was a life, a terrible significance, that outran all these causes. It was not in the posture, grand as that was,— not in the sinstamped brow, rough with wrinkles like a storm-chafed sea, — not in the wiry hair, gray and half rising in haggard locks, like adders that in vain try to escape the foot that treads them down, — nor in the mouth, for that was hid behind the impotent guard of the upraised arm and clenched fist, — but in those painted eyes, into which, all-fascinated, we ever gazed, reading in them all that crouching terror, all the punishment of that spectral presence, all the poignant consciousness of his fate to whom such things could happen, to whom already his victims rise again,

While I yet gazed, a sickening terror pervading me in the presence of these ghastly eyes, there came a voice, as if from afar, — “ Read on!” — so consonant with the tone of my emotions, that I looked to see the figure itself take speech, until Mac, with a gasp, resumed. Still, as he read, the nightmare-spell possessed me, till a convulsive clutch upon my arm roused me, and instinctively, with the returning sense, I turned to Clarian.

Not too soon, — for then, in his own person, and in that strange glare, he was interpreting the picture to us. He stood, not thrown back like Macbeth, but drawn forward, on tiptoe, with neck reached out, form erect, but lax, one arm extended, and one long diaphonous finger pointing over our heads at something he saw behind us, but towards which, in the extremity of our terror, we dared not turn our eyes. He saw it,— more than saw it, — we knew, as we noted the scream swelling in his throat, yet dying away into an inarticulate breath ere it passed the blue and shaken lips, — he saw it, and those eyes of his, large enough in their wont, waxed larger still, wilder, madder with desperate affright, till every one of us, save the absorbed reader, recognized in them the nightmare horror of the picture,— knew that in Macbeth Clarian had drawn his own portrait! There he stood, drawn on, staring, pointing—

“ Stop ! ” shouted Dr. Thorne, his voice hoarse and strident with emotion; but Mac, absorbed in his text, still read, flinging a fine and subtile emotion of scorn into the words,—

“ Triple fool! be silent! ” cried Dr. Thorne again, springing to his feet,— while we, Spell-bound, sat still and waited for the end. “ Cease ! do you not see?” cried he, seizing Mac.

But there stood Clarian yet, that red light upon his cheek and brow, that fixed stare of a real, unpainted horror in his speechless face, that long finger still pointing and trembling not,— there he stood, fixed, while one might count ten. Then over his blue lips, like a ghost from its tomb, stole a low and hissing whisper, that curdled our blood, and peopled all the room with dreadful things,—a low whisper that said,—

“ Prithee, see there! behold ! it comes ! it comes! ” Now he beckoned in the air, and called with a shuddering, smothered shriek, — “ Come ! I did it! come ! Ha ! ” yelled he, plucking the spell front his limbs like a garment, and springing madly forward towards the door, — “ Ha! touch me not! Off, I say, off!” He paused, gazed wildly round, flung his hand to his brow, and, while his eyes rolled till nothing but their whites were seen, while the purple veins swelled like mole-tracks in his forehead, and a bubbling froth began to gather about his lips, he tossed his arms in the air, gave shrieking utterance to the cry,—“O Christ! it is gone! it is gone!” and fell to the floor with a bound.

We sprang to him,— Thorne first of any.

“ This is my place, gentlemen,” said he, in quick, nervous tones. Then, taking the prostrate child into his arms, he carried him to his bed, laid him down, felt his pulse, and placed his head in Mac’s arms. Returning then, he veiled the picture, flung the salvor out of the window, and dismissed the huddled throng of frightened students, warning them to be silent as to the night’s events. “ Very likely Clarian will never see to-morrow; so be careful, lest you soil his memory.”

“ What does it mean, Thorne ? ” asked Mac, as the Doctor and I came again to the bedside. “ It is nothing more than an overdose of cannabis or opium upon an excited nervous system, is it ? ”

Thorne looked at the delieate-limbed child who lay there in Mac’s strong arms, wiped away the gathering froth from the lips, replaced the feebly quivering limbs, and, as he lingered over the pulse, replied, —

“ He has been taking hashish?”

“ He has taken it,-—-I do not say he is under its influence now.”

“ No,— he has not touched any stimulant. This is much worse than that,— this means epilepsy, Mac, and we may have to choose between death and idiocy”

He was still examining the boy, and showing Mac how to hold him most comfortably.

“ If I could only get at the causes of this attack, — those, I mean, which lie deeper than the mere physical disorder, — if I could only find out wluit it is he has been doing, — and I could, easily, wore I not afraid of directing suspicion towards him, or bringing about some unfortunate embarrassment ”—

“ What is it you suspect ? ” thundered Mac.

“ Either some cruel trick has been played upon the boy, or he has been guilty of some act of madness ” ——

“Impossible!” cried we in a breath; “ Clarian is as pure as Heaven.”

“ Look at him, Thorne !” said my good chum, — “look at the child’s baby-face, so frank and earnest!—look at him! You dare not say an impure thought ever awoke in that brain, an impure word ever crossed those lips.”

Dr. Thorne smiled sadly.

“ There is no standard of reason to the enthusiast, my dear Mac; and here is one, of a surety. However, time will reveal; I wish I knew. Come, Ned, help me to mix some medicines here. Be careful to keep his head right, Mac, so as to have the circulation as free as possible.”

While we were occupied in the front room, there came a stout double knock at the door, and when I opened it, Hullfish, the weather-beaten old constable of the borough, made his hesitating appearance. The Doctor gave me a quick glance, as if to say, “I told you so,” and then returned the old man’s bluff salutation. As soon as Hullfish saw him, he came forward with something like a sigh of relief, and said,—

“ Ah, Doc, you here ? ’Tar’n’t a hoax, then, though I was mightily ’feared it was. Them students is the Devil for ehivying of a feller, — beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Blount. Have you got him yonder, Doctor?” said he, his keen eye noticing Mac and Clarian in the back room.

“ What do you mean, Hullfish? Got whom ? ” asked Thorne, making me a sign to be quiet.

“ The party, Sir, that was to be copped. I’ve got a blank warrant here, all right, and a pair of bracelets, in case of trouble.”

“ What fool’s errand is this, old man ? ” asked the Doctor, sternly.

“What! you don’t know about it? Lord! p’raps it’s a sell, after all,” said he, quite chopfallen. “ But I’ve got my pay, anyhow, and there’s no mistake in a V on the Princeton Bank. And here’s the papers,” said he, handing a note to the Doctor. “ If that’s slum, I'm done, that’s all.”

The Doctor glanced at the scrap of paper, then handed it to me, asking, “ Is that his handwriting?”

It was a note, requiring Mr. Hullfish to privately arrest a person guilty of a capital offence, until now concealed. If he was not brought to Hullfish’s house between nine and ten that night, then Hullfish was to proceed to No.—North College, where he would be certain to find the party. The arrest must be made quietly. The handwriting was undoubtedly Clarian’s, and I told Thorne as much.

“ You see, gentlemen,” said Hullfish, “ I wouldn’t ’a’ taken no notice of it, ef it hadn’t been for the money; but, thinks I, them students a’n't in the habit of sech costly jokes, and maybe there’ll be some pinching to do, after all. So you mean to say it’s a gam, do you, Doctor ? May I be so bold as to inquire what yonder chap’s holding on to ’tother about?”

“‘Tother’ is dangerously ill,—has a fit, Hullfish. He is the author of that note, — very probably was out of his mind when he wrote it.”

“So? Pity! Very sick ? Mayn’t I see him ? ”

But, as he stepped forward, Thorne stood in the way and effectually intercepted his view. The constable smiled cunningly, as he drew back, and said,—

“ You’re sure ’ta’n’t nothing else, then ? Nobody ’s been getting rapped on the head? Didn’t see no blood, though,— that’s true. Well, I don’t like to be sold, that’s a fact,—but there’s no help for it. Here’s the young man’s change, Doctor, — warrant sixty-six, my fees one dollar.”

Thorne carelessly asked if there had been any rows lately,— if he had heard of any one being hurt, — if they had been quiet recently along the canal; and being assured that there had been no disturbance of moment,—“only a little brush between Arch and Long Tobe, down to Gibe’s,”— he handed the money back to Hullfish.

“Keep that yourself,— it is yours by rights. And, look you, mum’s the word in this case, for two reasons: there’s danger that the poor little fellow there is going to croak before long, and you’d be sorry to think you’d given trouble to a dead man ; and what’s more, if the boys get hold of this, there’ll be no end of their chaffing. There’s not a few of them would like to cook your goose for you,— I needn’t tell you why; so, if you don’t want them to get the flashest kind of a pull over you, why, you’ll take my advice and keep dark.”

“Nothing like slang, Ned, with the police or the prigging gentry. It gives them a wonderful respect for your opinion,” said the Doctor, when Hullfish was gone. But his serious, almost stern look returned immediately, as he continued,— “Now to solve this mystery, and find out what this wretched boy has been doing. Come, you and Mac, help me to understand him.”

When we had told the Doctor all we knew of the lad, he pondered long over our recital.

“ One thing is certain,” said he : “ the boy is innocent in intention, whatever he has done, and we must stand by him, —you two particularly; for you are to blame, if he has got himself into any predicament.”

“ The boy has done nothing wrong, Thorne,” said Mac, sturdily; “he may have been trapped, or got himself involved somehow, but he never could have committed any crime capable of superinducing such an attack as this.”

The Doctor shook his head.

“ You may be right, my friend,—and I hope you are, for the child’s sake, for it will certainly kill him, if he has. But I never trust an intense imagination when morbidly excited, and I have read of some strange freaks done by persons under the influence of that infernal hashish. However, trust me, I shall find out what is the matter before long, and bring the boy round nicely. He is improving fast now, and all we have to do is to avert another attack.”

Thank Heaven, in a day or two Clarian was pronounced to be out of danger, and promising rapid recovery. We had removed him to our rooms, as soon as the violence of the convulsion left him, in order to spare him the associations connected with his own abode. Still, the lad continued very weak, and Thorne said he had never seen so slight an attack followed by such extreme prostration. Then it did my heart good to see how my chum transformed himself into the tenderest, the most efficient of nurses. He laid aside entirely his brusque Manner, talked in the softest tones, stole noiselessly about our rooms, and showed all the tender solicitude, all the quiet “ handiness ” of a gentle woman. I could see that Clarian loved to have him at his bedside, and to feel his caressing hand.

“ You see, Ned,” Mac would say, in a deprecatory tone that amused me vastly, “ I really pity the poor little devil, and can’t help doing all in my power for him. He’s such a soft little ass, — confound Thorne! he makes me mad with his cursed suspicions !—and then the boy is out of place here in this rough-and-tumble tiltyard. Reminds me of a delicate wineglass crowded in among a ruck of aleflagons and battered quart-cups.”

But, though we rejoiced to see that Clarian’s health promised to be better than it had been for months, we did not fail to notice with regret and apprehension, that, as he grew physically better and mentally clearer, a darkening cloud settled over his whole being, until he seemed on the point of drowning in the depths of an irremediable dejection and despair. Besides this, he was ever on the point of telling us something, which he yet failed of courage to put into words ; and Thorne, noticing this, when, one day, we were all seated round the bed, while the lad fixed his shaded, large, Mournful eyes upon us with a painfully imploring look, said suddenly, his fingers upon Clarian’s pulse,—

“ You have something to say to us,—a confession to make, Clarian.”

The boy flushed and shuddered, but did not falter, as he replied, “ Yes.”

“ You must withhold it until you are well again. I know what it is.”

Clarian quickly withdrew his hand from the Doctor’s grasp.

“ You know it, and yet here, touching me? Impossible! entirely impossible ! ”

“ Oh, as to that,” said Thorne, with a cool shrug of the shoulders, “ you must remember that our relations are simply those of physician and patient. Other things have nought to do with it. And, as your physician, I require you to withhold the matter until you are well enough to face the world.”

“ No,— I must reap where I have sown. I have no right to impose upon My friends any longer.”

“ Bad news travel fast enough, Clarian, and there is no wisdom in losing a friend so long as you can retain him.”

“ I do not see the force of your reasoning, Dr. Thorne. I have enough to answer for, without the additional contumely of being called an impostor.”

“For your mother’s sake, Clarian, I command you to wait. Spare her what pain you can, at least.”

“My mother! Oh, my God, do not name her ! do not name her ! ”

And he burst into the only tears I ever saw him shed, hiding his face in the bed-clothes, and sobbing piteously.

“ What does this mean ? ” said Mac, as soon as we were where Clarian could not hear us. “What have you found out,?”

“ Positively nothing more than you know already,” answered Thorne.

“Nothing?” echoed Mac, very indignantly; “you speak very confidently for one having such poor grounds.”

“ My dear Mac,” said Thorne, kindly, “ do you think I am not as much concerned about Clarian as you are ? Positively, I would give half I own to arrive at a satisfactory solution of this mystery. But what can we do ? The boy believes himself a great criminal. Do you not see at once, that, if we permit him to confess his crime, he will insist upon taking himself out of our keeping,— commit suicide, get himself sent to the madhouse, or anyhow lose our care and our soothing influence? We cannot relieve him until we restore his strength and composure. All we can do now is to watch him, soothe him, and by all means stave off this confession until he is stronger. It would kill him to face a charge now. I am inquiring quietly, and, if anything serious has happened, shall be sure to find out his connection with it.”

Though we rebelled against the Doctor’s conclusions, we could not but see the prudence of the course he advised, and so we sat down to watch our poor little friend, gnawed with bitter anxiety, and feeling a sad consciousness that the disease itself under which he suffered was beyond our skilfullest surgery, and one that inevitably threatened the saddest consequences. A man has grand powers of recovery, so long as his spirit is free ; but let him once be persuaded that his soul is Chained down forever in adamantine fetters, and, though, like Prometheus, he may endure with silence, patience, even divinely, he is nevertheless utterly incapable of any positive effort towards recuperation. His faith becomes, by a subtile law of our being, his fact; the mountain is gifted with actual motion, and rewards the temerity of his zeal by falling upon him and crushing him forever. Such a person moves on, perchance, like a deep, noble river, in calm and silence, but still moves on, inevitably destined to lose himself in the common ocean. And this was the promise of Clarian’s case. Whatever was his hidden woe, however trivial its rational results, or baseless its causes, it had beyond remedy seized upon his soul, and we knew, that, unless it could be done away with at the source, the end was certain : first the fury, then the apathy of madness. He was no longer tortured with a visible haunting presence, such as had borne him down on that fatal night, but we saw plainly that he had taken the Spectre into his own breast, and nursed it, as a bosom serpent, upon his rapidly exhausting energies.

Happily for us,— ere Clarian was quite beyond recovery, while Mac still tore his hair in rage at his own impotence, while the Doctor still pursued his researches with the sedateness of a philosopher, and I was using what power I had to alleviate my little friend’s misery,—that subtile and mysterious agency, which, in our blindness and need, we term Chance, interposed its offices, rolled away the cloud from the mystery, and, like a good angel, rescued Clarian, even as he was tottering upon the very brink of the dismal prhipice to whose borders he had innocently strayed.

I shall never forget that pleasant June day. It was the first time that Clarian had been out since his illness; and I was his single companion, as he strayed slowly along through the college grounds, leaning tremulously upon my arm, dragging his feet languidly over the pebbled walks, and drinking in the warm, fresh, quivering air with a manner that, although apathetic, still spoke of some power of enjoyment. It was during the hour for the forenoon recitation, and the elm-shaded campus was entirely free of students. As Clarian walked along, his eyes bent down, I heard him murmuring that delicious verse of George Herbert’s, —

“ ‘ For thou must die,’ — so sad! And yet the thought itself of death is not that which saddens us so, do you think, Ned?” he went on, I hearing his words without heeding them,— for I was looking just then towards the outer gate next the President’s house, through which I saw Dr. Thorne coming rapidly, accompanied by a stout, middle-aged man, having the dress and appearance of a well-to-do farmer,— “Not the thought, simply, ‘Thou must die,’” repeated Clarian, in his plaintive murmur, “but the feeling that all this decay and death is of ourselves, and could be averted by ourselves, had we only self-control, could we only keep ourselves pure, and so be ever near God and of Him. There's cause for a deeper melancholy, poignanter tears than ever Jacques shed.”

Dr. Thorne and his companion were now quite near, coining towards us on the same path, when I saw the stranger slap his thigh energetically and catch Thorne by the arm, while he exclaimed in tones of boisterous surprise,—

“ Why, there's the very little chap, as I’m alive ! ”

I had half a glimpse of the Doctor’s seizing his companion and clapping one hand over his month, as if to prevent him from saying more, — but it was too late. At the sound of the man’s voice I felt Clarian bound electrically. He looked up,— over his face began to come again that terrible anguish of the night of the picture, but the muscles seemed too weak to bring it all back, — be grew limp against me,— his arms hung inert at his side, — a word that sounded like “ Spare me ! ” gurgled in his throat, — a feeble shudder shook him, and, ere I could interpose my arm, he sank in a heap at my feet, white, and cold, and lifeless. Before I had raised him, Thorne and the man sprang to my aid, and the latter, bending over with eager haste, took the thin white hands in his own, half caressing them, half fearing to grasp them, speaking to him the while in tones of frightened entreaty, that, on any other occasion, would have been ludicrous enough.

“ Come, now, my little man,” said he,— “ come, don’t he afeard, don't be afeard of me ! Dan Buckhurst won’t harm ye, not for the world, poor child ! Come, stand up ! ’Twas all a joke. Come, come ! — My God! Doctor, he a’n’t dead, is he ? ” cried he to Thorne, in horror.

“ If he is. you have killed him, you damned old fool, you!” responded Thorne, impetuously, thrusting the man aside with an angry gesture, and bending down to examine the lad’s inert form. “ Thank God, Ned,” said he at last, “ it is only a swoon this time, and we’ll soon have him all right. We must get him to bed, though. Here, Buckhurst, you are the strongest; stop whimpering there, you old jackanapes, and bring him along.”

Buckhurst quickly obeyed, lifting Clarian up in his arms as gently and tenderly as if he had been an infant, and following Thorne, who led the way to our rooms. There the lad was placed upon the bed with which he had become only too familiar, and the Doctor, by means of his restoratives, soon had the satisfaction of recalling breath and motion. As soon as the boy’s sighs gave evidence of returning vitality, Thorne thrust us all from the room, including Mac, who had now come in from class, saying to Buckhurst,—

“Now, Sir, tell them all about it,— and wait here ; I shall want you presently.” With which words he closed the door upon us, and returned to his patient.

Mr. Buckhurst refused the chair tendered him by Mac, and paced up and down the room in a state of immense perturbation.

“Well, I never!” said he, “well, I never! It taken me all aback, Sir,” added he, turning to me. “ Did you ever see anything like it ? Why, he’s jest like a gal ! Dang it, Sir ! my Molly a’n’t half as nervous as he is. I hope he’ll get well, — I raelly do, now. I wouldn’t hev had it happen for I dunno what, now, indeed !” And he resumed his walk, repeating to himself, “Well, I never ! Who’d 'a' judged ’twas a child like that ?”

“ May I beg to know what you refer to, Mr. Buckhurst?” asked Mac, with considerable impatience in his tones.

“ Eh,— what ? He’s mighty delicate, a’n’t he?” said the man, with his thumb indicating the next room.

“ Very delicate indeed, Sir, — perhaps you can explain the cause of his present attack,” said I, angrily; for I had begun to think, from Buckhurst’s manner, that he had been guilty of some practical joke upon Ciarian. I saw the fire of a similar suspicion blazing in Mac’s eyes; and I fear, had our conclusions been verified, the worthy Mr. Buckhurst would have fared very badly at our hands, spite the laws of hospitality.

“ What! did he never tell you ? Of course not, though, being sick ever sence, and thinking me dead, too. Well, I’ll tell you: but mind, you mustn’t banter the child about it, for he can’t stand it,— though it’s only a joke. Might have been serious, to be sure, but, as things turns out, a pretty good joke, to my notion,— though I’m rael sorry he's been so bad about it.”

Mac rose, removed his coat, and marched deliberately up to our guest. “ See here. Sir,” said he in his deepest bass voice, which his dark frown made still more ominous, “ do you mean us to infer that you have been making that child Clarian the victim of any of your infernal jokes, as you style them?”

Buckhurst stared a moment, and then, seeming to comprehend the drift of Mac’s words, burst into a hearty laugh.

“ No, Sir ! ” he shouted, “ the shoe’s on the other foot, thank the Lord ! The boy himself played the joke, or trick, whatever it was. Dr. Thorne tells me he was kind of crazy, from drinking laudanum, or some sech pisonous matter. Howsever that was, I'm sure he didn’t do it in airnest,—thought so from the very first, — and now I've had a good look at his face, I’d swear to it.”

“ What did he do ? ” asked Mac, hurriedly.

Buckhurst laughed in that hearty way of his. Said he, —

“ I'll wager you a stack of hay agin them books yander you couldn’t guess in a week now. What d’ye think it was ? Ho! ho ! Why, why, the little rascal shoved me into the canawl! ”

“ Shoved you into the canal! ” echoed I, while Mac, looking first at him, then at me, finally burst into a peal of laughter, shouting the while,—

“ Bravo ! There’s your ‘ experience ’ philosophy, Ned Blount 1 Catch me teaching milksops again ! Go on, Buckhurst, tell us all about it.”

“ Yes,” said Mr. Buckhurst, apparently quite pleased to see that we laughed with him. “ It don’t look like it was in the nature of things, somehow, does it ? Fact, though, he did indeed. Shoved me right in, so quick I didn’t know what the Devil was the matter, until I soused kersplash ! and see him taking out over the drawbridge like mad.”

“ When was that, Mr. Buckhurst ? ”

“ Jest inside of a month ago, Sir, one night.”

“ Sapperment, Ned ! that was the time of the ‘herb Pantagruelion ’! — Well, what were you doing on the canal at that hour ? ” asked Mac, slyly.

“No, you needn’t, now,— I see you wink at him,— honor bright. I’d been up to town, to take a mess o’ clams at Giberson’s, with maybe a sprinklin’ of his apple-jack, — nothing else,— and I was on my way home, — to Skillman’s tavern at the dépôt, you know,— and I’d jest stopped a piece, and was a-standing there, looking at the moon in the water, when he tipped me over. I tell you, I was mad when I crawled out wet as a rat; and if I’d ketched him then, you may depend upon it, I’d ’a’ given his jacket a precious warming. As I said, he run off, but jest as I turned towards the tavern, I see him a-coming back, kinder wild-like; so I slipped behind alumber-pile, hoping he might come over the bridge, so I could lay my fingers on him. The moon was about its highest, so I could see his face, plain as day, — white,— skim-milk warn’t a circumstance to it,— and his eyes wide open as they could stretch. I tell you, he was wild ! He looked up and down a bit, mumbled somethin’ I couldn’t make out, and then what do you think that boy did ? Why, he jumped in, clothes and all, bold as a lion,—plainly to save me from drowning, and me all the time aspyin’ at him from behind a lumber-pile! He was sarching for me, I knowed, for he swum up and down jest about there for the space maybe of a quarter of an hour. And when he give it up at last, and come out, he kinder sunk down on the tow-path, and I heard him say plain enough, though he only whispered it,— jest like a woman actor I see down to York oncet, playin’ in Guy something or other,—she was a sort of an old gypsy devil, — says he, 'I am a murderer, then ! ’ Thinks I, ‘ Sonny, all but the murderer !' And as he stood up again, he ’peared to suffer so, his face was so white, and his knees so shaky, that I says to myself, 'Dan, you’ve carried the joke far enough.' So I sings out to him, and comes out from behind the lumber-stack, but, Lord bless ye! he jest peeped round over his shoulder oncet, gave a kind of chokin’ scream like, and put out up the road as if the Devil was after him. I knowed it warn’t no use to follow him, so I got on a dry shirt and went to bed. Tbc next day I went home, and I’d mighty near forgot all about it, only today I came to see Dr. Thorne for somethin’ to do my cold good, and he wantin’ to know how I ketched it brought the whole matter back again.”

“ You’re an old brick, Buckhurst!” cried Mac, giving the jovial farmer a thundering slap on the back, and a hearty grasp of his hand; “ and you shall drink the boy’s health with Ned and me this day, or I'll know the reason why. Ned Blount, a’n’t it glorious ? Said I not, you ill-omened bird, said I not, ‘Il y a toujours un Dieu pour les enfans et pour les ivrognes’? — So you came down with Thorne to ease the poor little fellow’s mind, did you, Buckhurst? That’s right, and you shall see the picture, by Jove! And you’ll say, when you see it, that such a picture were cheap at the cost of duckings for a dozen Buckhursts. Now tell me truly, what do you think made him push you in ? ”

“Of course, it was the pison, Sir,— a baby like that wouldn’t harm a flea. I thought maybe, until I see Dr. Thorne, that he done it out of misclueviousness, as boys will do, you know,—jest as they steal a feller’s apples, and knock his turkeys of’n the roost, — but yander’s not one of them kind ; so he must ’a’ been crazy, and I’m rael sorry he’s been so bad put to about it, — I am, indeed.”

Here the inner door was opened, and Thorne joined us, with a moisture about his eyes that he used afterwards to deny most vehemently.

“ Buckhurst, he wants to see you; go in there,” said he,— adding, in a lower tone, “ Now, mind you, the child’s delicate as spun glass; so be careful.”

“ Come in, Mr. Buckhurst,” called Clarian.

The worthy farmer looked to right and left, as if he would much rather have made his escape, but, impelled by a shove from the Doctor, he ran his fingers through his coarse hair, and, with a very red and “ I-wish-I-was-out-of-this ” face, went in, closing the door behind him.

“ Phew ! ” said Thorne, seating himself somewhat testily, after having filled and lighted a pipe, — “ Phew! So that’s over, and I a’n’t sorry ; it’s as bad as reading the 'Diary of a Physician.’ The boy will be all right now, and the lesson won’t hurt him, though it has been a rough one. But no more metaphysics for him, Ned Blount! And, boys, let this be a warning to you. He’s too brittle a toy to be handled in your rough fashion.”

“ You needn’t tell us that, Thorne,” said Mac, drawing a long breath. “Catch me kicking over children’s baby-houses again, or telling ’em ghost-stories in the dark ! ”

“ He vows never again to touch brush, crayon, or pencil; and if he is the devotee von describe him to be, Ned, I would not advise you to oppose him in his determination. You must keep him here till vacation, and next term he can exchange his room. Macbeth’s company will never be very agreeable to him, I should judge ; and it will not do to let him destroy the picture.”

Thorne puffed away vigorously for a minute or two.

“That boy ought to turn preacher, Mac. He touched me nearer just now than I have been touched for an age.

almost persuaded me to follow the example of divine Achilles and ‘refresh my soul with tears.’ He has that tear-bringing privilege of genius, to a certainty.”

And so it seemed, indeed; for presently the worthy Mr. Buckhurst made his reappearance in quite a sad state, mopping his red face and swollen eyes most vigorously with a figured cotton handkerchief, and proclaiming, with as much intelligibility as the cold in his head and the peculiar circumstances of the case would admit of, that he'd “ be dagg’d ef he hadd’t raver be chucked idto two cadawls dad ’ave dat iddocedt baby beggid his pardod about de codfouded duckid ! Wat de hell did he care about gittid wet, he’d like to kdow ? Dodsedse ! — ’twad all dud id fud, adyhow ! ”

-“ And now you, my dear, dear

friends,” said Clarian, turning his sad, full eyes upon us, and calling us to his side, and to his arms.

But I shall draw a veil over that interview.

That night, after we had talked long and lovingly together, and were now sitting, each absorbed in his own thoughts, and emulating the quiet that reigned around college, Clarian softly joined us, and placed an open book in Mac’s hands.

“ Will you, dear Mac ? ” murmured he.

Then Mac, all full of solemn emotion, read through the grand periods of the Church Litany, and when he had finished, Clarian, with a thrilling “ Let us pray,” offered up such a thanksgiving as I had never heard, praying to the kind Father who had so mercifully extricated him, that our paths might still be enlightened, and our walks made humble and righteous.

“ Clarian,” said Mac, after a pause, when we were again on our feet, — he laid his hands on the boy’s shoulders, as he spoke, and looked into his eyes, — “ Clarian, would it have happened, if you had not taken that foul drug ? ”

Clarian shuddered, and covered up his face in his hands.

“ Do not ask me, dear Mac ! do not ask me ! Oh, be sure, my aims, I thought, were noble, and myself I thought so pure!—but—I cannot say, Mac, I cannot say.

“At least, Clarian,” said Mac, after a while, his deep voice wonderfully refined with strong emotion, “ at least, the picture was not painted in vain. Even as it is in the play, Banquo died that his issue might reign after him; and this lesson of ours will bear fruit far mightier than the trifling pains of its parturition. Ay, Clarian, your picture has not been vainly painted.—And now, Ned,” said he, rising, “ we must put our baby to bed; for he is to wake early tomorrow, and know himself a man ! ”