Scotland/Scots > Wilson's tales of the Borders and of Scotland > Volume 3

raK CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN.
53
piate. I shall immediately have another visit from my
messenger. Oh, sir, who shall help him that is accursed
of Heaven.”
He turned his body from me, to hide his face, and I
could perceive that he shook as if from a spasm of the heart.
I told him that he talked like one under the dark veil of
religious melancholy, or rather like one who had something
on his conscience different from the ordinary burden of
human frailty, making him attribute to retribution what
was only a disease incident to mankind ; that Heaven was
not against the cure of any mortal; and that he would, for
certainty, have no attack that day, nor, perhaps, for several
days, especially if he used the lotion I recommended to him.
He heard me in silence, shaking, at intervals, his head,
solemnly and incredulously, turning his eyes to heaven,
and clasping his hands as if in mental adjuration. “ It will
not do,” he cried. “ I have more faith in the language of
this monitor than in that of frail man. I will have another
attack instantly. Leave me! Why will you force me thus
to brave heaven, between whose dread powers and ro‘)
there is a secret compact recorded here—here?”—striking
his chest. “ This disease I fear and tremble at; but it is
not hell, and, by bearing the one, I may avoid the other.
So do I claim these pangs, sharper than scorpions’ tongues,
as my right, my due, my redemption. Oh God! what a
price do I pay for relief from eternal fire!”
He sat down as he concluded these mysterious words, in
an attitude of expectation of the coming paroxysm, and I
conceived that my best reply to his wild and incoherent
ideas would be, the refuting fact of the absence of any
attack at that time. I, therefore, left him; and, as I
passed along the passage to the door, was met by his
anxious wife, who inquired of me, with tears in her eyes,
if I knew what this malady was, which, leaving no trace
of its presence, yet produced such a pain us she never