Chapter XV

Welcome, Hugo; tell me, did you ever see so terrible a
storm!--MATURIN: _Bertram_.

In a room communicating with the apartments of the Governor of Throndhjem, three of his Excellency’s secretaries sat at a table loaded with parchments, papers, inkstands, and seals, a fourth chair, left vacant, showing that one of the scribes was late. They had been silently writing and thinking for some time, when one of them exclaimed: “Did you know, Wapherney, that the poor librarian, Foxtipp, is to be dismissed by the bishop, owing to the letter which you wrote recommending Dr. Anglyvius’s petition to his favorable notice?”

“What nonsense are you talking, Richard?” hastily inquired the secretary to whom Richard had not spoken. “Wapherney could not have written in favor of Anglyvius, for the fellow’s petition disgusted the general when I read it to him.”

“So you told me,” answered Wapherney; “but I found the word _tribuatur_[10] written on the petition in his Excellency’s own hand.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed the other.

“Yes, my dear fellow; and several other of his Excellency’s decisions of which you told me, were also altered in marginal notes. For instance, on the petition of the miners, the general wrote, _negetur_.”

“What! I can’t understand that; the general dreaded the turbulent spirit of those miners.”

“Perhaps he wanted to frighten them into submission by his severity. What makes me think so is that Chaplain Munder’s request for the pardon of twelve condemned prisoners is also refused.”

The secretary whom Wapherney addressed, rose abruptly, saying, “Oh, come now, I can’t believe that; the governor is too kind, and expressed too much compassion for those prisoners to--”

“Very well, Arthur,” answered Wapherney; “read it for yourself.”

Arthur took the petition and saw the fatal words.

“Really,” said he, “I can scarcely credit my own eyes. I must present this to the governor again. What day did his Excellency mark these papers?”

“I believe it was some three days ago,” replied Wapherney.

“That was,” said Richard in a low voice, “the morning before Baron Ordener’s brief appearance and mysteriously sudden disappearance.”

“Stay!” quickly exclaimed Wapherney, before Arthur had time to answer; “if here is not another _tribuatur_ on Benignus Spiagudry’s ridiculous petition!”

Richard burst out laughing.

“Didn’t that old keeper of corpses disappear in a strange way, too?”

“Yes,” replied Arthur; “a body was found in his charnel-house so mutilated that the officers of the law are in pursuit of him on a charge of sacrilege. But a little Lapp, who acted as his servant, and who was left alone at the Spladgest, thinks, as do most people, that the Devil carried him off for a sorcerer.”

“Here,” said Wapherney, laughing, “is a fellow who leaves a good reputation behind him!”

He had hardly had his laugh out when the fourth secretary came in.

“Upon my honor, Gustavus, you are very late this morning. Did you happen to get married yesterday?”

“Oh, no!” answered Wapherney; “he only took the longest way round, so that he might pass under the fair Rosalie’s windows in his new cloak.”

“Wapherney,” said the new-comer, “I only wish that you were right. But the cause of my delay is not half so agreeable; and I doubt if my new cloak produced the slightest effect upon the persons whom I visited.”

“Where have you been, then?” asked Arthur.

“To the Spladgest.”

“Heaven is my witness,” cried Wapherney, dropping his pen, “that we were just now speaking of that place! But though it may be talked of to pass away the time, I cannot conceive how anybody can enter it.”

“And still less,” said Richard, “how anybody can linger there. But what did you see, my dear Gustavus?”

“Yes,” said Gustavus, “you are curious to hear about it, if not to see it; and it would serve you right if I refused to describe those horrors which you would shudder to behold.”

The three secretaries crowded about Gustavus, who waited to be urged, although his desire to tell what he had seen was secretly no less lively than their curiosity to hear.

“Well, Wapherney, you can repeat my story to your little sister, who is so fond of frightful tales. I was pushed into the Spladgest by the crowd which thronged about it. The bodies of three soldiers and two bowmen from the Munkholm regiment had just been brought in, having been found yesterday some four miles away, in the ravine at the foot of Cascadthymore cliff. Some of the spectators declared that the poor fellows were the very ones sent out three days ago in the direction of Skongen to catch the runaway keeper of the Spladgest. If this be true, it is impossible to imagine how so many well-armed men could be murdered. The mutilation of the bodies seems to prove that they were flung from the top of the rocks. It made my hair stand on end to look at them.”

“What, Gustavus! did you see them?” eagerly inquired Wapherney.

“They are still before my eyes.”

“And has any one an idea as to the authors of the crime?”

“Some think that it may have been a band of miners, and assert that they heard the sound of the horn with which the soldiers call to one another, only yesterday among the mountains.”

“Really!” said Arthur.

“Yes; but an old peasant demolished this supposition by remarking that there were neither mines nor miners in the neighborhood of Cascadthymore.”

“Then who could it have been?”

“No one knows. If the bodies were not intact, it might be supposed the work of wild beasts, for their limbs are covered with long, deep scratches. The same is the case with the corpse of a white-bearded old man brought into the Spladgest day before yesterday, after that fearful storm which prevented you, my dear Leander Wapherney, from visiting your Hero across the fjord, on the Larsynn shore.”

“All right, Gustavus,” said Wapherney, laughing. “But who was this old man?”

“From his height, his long white beard, and a rosary still clasped tightly in his hands, although he had been stripped of everything else, he was recognized as a hermit of the neighborhood; I believe they called him the Monk of Lynrass. It is evident that this poor man was murdered also; but for what purpose? People are not slaughtered now for their religious opinions, and the old hermit possessed nothing in the world but his serge gown and the good-will of all who knew him.”

“And you say,” observed Richard, “that his body was mangled, like those of the soldiers, as if by the claws of some savage animal?”

“Yes, my dear boy; and a fisherman declares that he noticed the same marks upon the body of an officer found murdered a few days since upon Urchtal Sands.”

“That is strange,” said Arthur.

“It is frightful,” said Richard.

“Come,” said Wapherney, “silence, and to work, for I think the general will be here soon. My dear Gustavus, I am curious to see those corpses. If you like, we will stop a moment at the Spladgest when we leave here this evening.”