NOTHING had occurred on Loch Diarmid for ages which had made so intense a sensation in the district as the death of the minister. The whole country bubbled up and seethed about that one house on the slope—the Manse, peaceablest of habitations, a few days ago so full of quiet happiness, but now shrouded in a veil of horror and woe. Was it accident, or was it murder? At first the opinion of the country-side inclined strongly in favour of the former supposition. The beast was ‘spirity’—too spirity for a man of Mr. Lothian’s age; and the night was stormy and dark; and he had not nor could have any enemy—and he was not robbed. It soon, however, became known that there was an actual witness of the tragedy, whose deposition would set all doubts at rest.
‘I hope she didna do it hersel,’ said the smith, when the tale was discussed. ‘I canna understand Jean Campbell being the one to see it.’
The mind of the district was moved with the profoundest longing for news, however small the scrap might be, that was afforded to it. People sprang up on every side who had seen a man about whom they did not recognise as a person known on the Loch. But, then, unfortunately the differences in their descriptions of him were so great that no individual likeness could be made out. One declared he was a perfect giant, another a little hunchback, one that he was dressed like a gentleman, and another that he was the meanest tramp. Jean Campbell was the only witness who had anything to tell; and her story, indeed, was terribly distinct as to the fact, though wanting in every detail that could identify the criminal. She gave her deposition in the narrative form which is always congenial to the peasant mind, and held by it steadily, though her strong, vigorous frame and rude health were almost worn out by what she had seen.
‘I had been to the mill to ask about my meal,’ said Jean; ‘and then I thought I would step in at the Manse and just ask for Mrs. Lothian, who is my stepdaughter. I heard a horse coming in the distance as I came out on the highroad from the awfu’ lonesome lane that leads to the mill. And glad I was to hear it. “Here’s company coming,” I said to myself. Ye’ll maybe no ken the road. There’s a high bank on one side with trees, and on the other you’re just on the braes, that are whins, and heather, and naething else. I was walking slow on that side to let the horseman come up, for it’s an ill bit of the road, and a man’s company is ay canny. Just afore the horse came up, I was awfu’ frichtened wi’ a rustling on the bank. It was dark, and ye couldna have seen your hand before you; but I could see there was somebody among the trees, and what would he be doing there? I canna think he saw me, for the bank is awful thick with trees, and I was doun among the whin-bushes, and a’ dark round and round. The horse came up, galloping as steady as a rock; but, just as it came to me, there was a blast of branches, and stones and moss came rumbling down the bank, just before the beast’s very feet. He was a very spirity beast, as a’ the parish kens—and he backit, and he reared, and up with his feet in the air, till I was nigh out of my senses with fright. Then there was a whirr first, and I heard a fa’ and a groan. It was an awfu’ thud, and the groan was an awfu’ groan. I think he must have fainted. And I was awfu’ feared myself; but before I could recover the man was down from the brae. There was a break in the clouds for a moment, and I could see him come rumbling down the bank.... No, I canna tell you what like he was. It was just a black shadow on the black trees. He went up to the one that had fallen, and me, thinking nae evil, I took heart, and ran up from where I had been among the whins, and went forward too. The one black spot bent ower the other, as if it had been to lift him—and me, it was on my lips to say, “Lord bless us! I’m here too, and we’ll save the poor man!” And then I saw a motion, and heard it.... Eh, dinna ask me what!—a dull, heavy stroke, and a crack, and another groan. I gave a cry—if he had killed me the next minute I couldna have helped it; and the creature started, and made a grasp at something, and then turned and started a’ round. I gied scream after scream, no able to stop. I had sunk down among the whins, and he couldna see me. And then he began to speel the brae as fast as he had come down. I stood there and cried, and durstna stir. And in a whilie down the lane came Andrew White and his wife and their laddie, with a lantern. And then we saw it was the minister. I was near dead with the fright and the awfu’ feeling myself. For weel I saw he had been murdered there where he lay. The laddie ran to the village for help, and Andrew’s man came down from the mill. And when I came to myself, I took my gown over my head, and ran a’ the way till I got to the Manse.... Me catch the villain! how could I catch him—and him up like a wild-cat into the wood? Na, I thought of Isabel—I’m meaning of Mrs. Lothian, his poor young wife. And that is a’ I can tell you, if ye were to question me till the morn.’
The miller’s testimony corroborated Jean’s. ‘The wife’ had cried upon him, as he was sitting down to his supper, to come and listen to the screams from the brae; and Andrew being no coward, and having bowels of compassion, notwithstanding his gloomy view of religious matters, rushed down immediately with his wife and ‘the laddie.’ He heard a rustling in the wood as he passed, but took no notice, not connecting it, he said, with the accident, and found the minister insensible, and scarcely breathing. He had had a bad fall from his horse, which of itself Andrew thought must have been enough to injure him seriously; and there was besides the fatal blow on the forehead, which had smashed the skull, and extinguished all consciousness and possibility of life. The testimony of the doctor was the only other important point in the evidence. He could not decide whether the other injuries might not have been fatal. That they were very serious, there was no doubt; but it was the blow which had killed Mr. Lothian. As to the man who did it, however, no information could be gathered. He was to Jean but ‘a black shadow’ in the darkness. She could not even tell what was his height, or dress, or anything about him.
The world of Loch Diarmid was thus utterly at sea, both as to the murderer and as to the motive for the crime. The minister had no enemies; for, to be sure, there was a difference between uttering a spiteful comment on his conduct in the smithy or ‘at the doors,’ and murdering him in a lonely road under cover of night. The general explanation of the torn ruffle was, that the murderer dimly perceived some ornament on his victim’s breast, and snatched at it before he was scared by Jean’s cries, which left him no time for further investigation. The poor little brooch, with its setting of pearls, and the two curls of hair intertwined, attained notoriety in the papers, being described elaborately over and over again, in case it should be offered anywhere for sale. But no clue to the murderer was obtained in this way. Then the excitement died out; and ‘at the doors,’ and on the way to church, and in the smithy, and everywhere else where the parish resorted, all thoughts and criticisms began to centre in the presentee.
But while this gradual softening process acted upon the parish at large, the Manse was left like a desolate island in the midst of all the life and sunshine. All at once, mysteriously, as by a stroke of magic, the light had vanished from it; a sort of dumb horror wrapt the house, abstracting it from the community of which it had been for so long a cheerful centre. Grass began to grow on the path from the gate to the door. Except Miss Catherine and Jean Campbell, who went and came daily, and messengers with inquiries after Mrs. Lothian, which naturally grew less and less frequent as time went on, nobody visited the house of mourning. Not that there was any lack of popular sympathy for the young widow. There was not a lady in the county who did not make her appearance at the Manse gates, to offer social consolation, or, at least, condolences. But Isabel saw nobody. She was stunned.
Thus the winter closed in again upon the hills, wrapping the closed Manse in all its mists and clouds. While the parish was contending hotly about the presentee, Isabel shut herself up in her house, which was still hers until his appointment should be settled, like the ghost of what she had been. One of the maids was already dismissed, in preparation for the final breaking up. The gardener had gone some time before. And only the sorrowful young mistress, with her widow’s cap on her brown curls, and desolation in her heart, and old Kirstin, who had been the minister’s housekeeper in old days, dwelt alone in the mournful Manse.