Chapter 25

Death finds us 'mid our playthings--snatches us,
As a cross nurse might do a wayward child,
From all our toys and baubles. His rough call
Unlooses all our favourite ties on earth;
And well if they are such as may be answer'd
In yonder world, where all is judged of truly.
_Old Play_.

It was a ghastly scene which opened, upon Martha Trapbois's return
with a light. Her own haggard and austere features were exaggerated by
all the desperation of grief, fear, and passion--but the latter was
predominant. On the floor lay the body of the robber, who had expired
without a groan, while his blood, flowing plentifully, had crimsoned
all around. Another body lay also there, on which the unfortunate
woman precipitated herself in agony, for it was that of her unhappy
father. In the next moment she started up, and exclaiming--"There may
be life yet!" strove to raise the body. Nigel went to her assistance,
but not without a glance at the open window; which Martha, as acute as
if undisturbed either by passion or terror, failed not to interpret
justly.

"Fear not," she cried, "fear not; they are base cowards, to whom
courage is as much unknown as mercy. If I had had weapons, I could
have defended myself against them without assistance or protection.--
Oh! my poor father! protection comes too late for this cold and stiff
corpse.--He is dead--dead!"

While she spoke, they were attempting to raise the dead body of the
old miser; but it was evident, even from the feeling of the inactive
weight and rigid joints, that life had forsaken her station. Nigel
looked for a wound, but saw none. The daughter of the deceased, with
more presence of mind than a daughter could at the time have been
supposed capable of exerting, discovered the instrument of his murder-
-a sort of scarf, which had been drawn so tight round his throat, as
to stifle his cries for assistance, in the first instance, and
afterwards to extinguish life.

She undid the fatal noose; and, laying the old man's body in the arms
of Lord Glenvarloch, she ran for water, for spirits, for essences, in
the vain hope that life might be only suspended. That hope proved
indeed vain. She chafed his temples, raised his head, loosened his
nightgown, (for it seemed as if he had arisen from bed upon hearing
the entrance of the villains,) and, finally, opened, with difficulty,
his fixed and closely-clenched hands, from one of which dropped a key,
from the other the very piece of gold about which the unhappy man had
been a little before so anxious, and which probably, in the impaired
state of his mental faculties, he was disposed to defend with as
desperate energy as if its amount had been necessary to his actual