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The Room in the Tower and Other Stories/Gavon's Eve

T is only the largest kind of ordnance map that records the existence of the village of Gavon, in the shire of Sutherland, and it is perhaps surprising that any map on whatever scale should mark so small and huddled a group of huts, set on a bare, bleak headland between moor and sea, and, so one would have thought, of no import at all to any who did not happen to live there. But the river Gavon, on the right bank of which stand this half-dozen of chimneyless and wind-swept habitations, is a geographical fact of far greater interest to outsiders, for the salmon there are heavy fish, the mouth of the river is clear of nets, and all the way up to Gavon Loch, some six miles inland, the coffee-coloured water lies in pool after deep pool, which verge, if the river is in order and the angler moderately sanguine, on a fishing probability amounting almost to a certainty. In any case, during the first fortnight of September last I had no blank day on those delectable waters, and up till the 15th of that month there was no day on which some one at the lodge in which I was stopping did not land a fish out of the famous Picts' pool. But after the 15th that pool was not fished again. The reason why is here set forward.

The river at this point, after some hundred yards of rapid, makes a sudden turn round a rocky angle, and plunges madly into the pool itself. Very deep water lies at the head of it, but deeper still further down on the east side, where a portion of the stream flicks back again in a swift dark backwater towards the top of the pool again. It is fishable only from the western bank, for to the east, above this backwater, a great wall of black and basaltic rock, heaved up no doubt by some fault in strata, rises sheer from the river to the height of some sixty feet. It is in fact nearly precipitous on both sides, heavily serrated at the top, and of so curious a thinness, that at about the middle of it where a fissure breaks its topmost edge, and some twenty feet from the top, there exists a long hole, a sort of lancet window, one would say, right through the rock, so that a slit of daylight can be seen through it. Since, therefore, no one would care to cast his line standing perched on that razor-edged eminence, the pool must needs be fished from the western bank. A decent fly, however, will cover it all.

It is on the western bank that there stand the remains of that which gave its title to the pool, namely, the ruins of a Pict castle, built out of rough and scarcely hewn masonry, unmortared but on a certain large and impressive scale, and in a very well-preserved condition considering its extreme antiquity. It is circular in shape and measures some twenty yards of diameter in its internal span. A staircase of large blocks with a rise of at least a foot leads up to the main gate, and opposite this on the side towards the river is another smaller postern through which down a rather hazardously steep slope a scrambling path, where progress demands both caution and activity, conducts to the head of the pool which lies immediately beneath it. A gate-chamber still roofed over exists in the solid wall: inside there are foundation indications of three rooms, and in the centre of all a very deep hole, probably a well. Finally, just outside the postern leading to the river is a small artificially levelled platform, some twenty feet across, as if made to support some super-incumbent edifice. Certain stone slabs and blocks are dispersed over it.

Brora, the post-town of Gavon, lies some six miles to the south-west, and from it a track over the moor leads to the rapids immediately above the Picts' pool, across which by somewhat extravagant striding from boulder to boulder a man can pass dry-foot when the river is low, and make his way up a steep path to the north of the basaltic rock, and so to the village. But this transit demands a steady head, and at the best is a somewhat giddy passage. Otherwise the road between it and Brora lies in a long detour higher up the moor, passing by the gates of Gavon Lodge, where I was stopping. For some vague and ill-defined reason the pool itself and the Picts' Castle had an uneasy reputation on the countryside, and several times trudging back from a day's fishing I have known my gillie take a longish circuit, though heavy with fish, rather than make this short cut in the dusk by the castle. On the first occasion when Sandy, a strapping yellow-bearded viking of twenty-five, did this he gave as a reason that the ground round about the castle was "mossy," though as a God-fearing man he must have known he lied. But on another occasion he was more frank, and said that the Picts' pool was "no canny" after sunset. I am now inclined to agree with him, though, when he lied about it, I think it was because as a God-fearing man he feared the devil also.

It was on the evening of September 14 that I was walking back with my host, Hugh Graham, from the forest beyond the lodge. It had been a day unseasonably hot for the time of year, and the hills were blanketed with soft, furry clouds. Sandy, the gillie of whom I have spoken, was behind with the ponies, and, idly enough, I told Hugh about his strange distaste for the Picts' pool after sunset. He listened, frowning a little.

"That's curious," he said. "I know there is some dim local superstition about the place, but last year certainly Sandy used to laugh at it. I remember asking him what ailed the place, and he said he thought nothing about the rubbish folk talked. But this year you say he avoids it."

"On several occasions with me he has done so."

Hugh smoked a while in silence, striding noiselessly over the dusky fragrant heather.

"Poor chap," he said, "I don't know what to do about him. He's becoming useless."

"Drink?" I asked.

"Yes, drink in a secondary manner. But trouble led to drink, and trouble, I am afraid, is leading him to worse than drink."

"The only thing worse than drink is the devil," I remarked.

"Precisely. That's where he is going. He goes there often."

"What on earth do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, it's rather curious," said Hugh. "You know I dabble a bit in folklore and local superstition, and I believe I am on the track of something odder than odd. Just wait a moment."

We stood there in the gathering dusk till the ponies laboured up the hillside to us, Sandy with his six feet of lithe strength strolling easily beside them up the steep brae, as if his long day's trudging had but served to half awaken his dormant powers of limb.

"Going to see Mistress Macpherson again tonight?" asked Hugh.

"Aye, puir body," said Sandy. "She's auld, and she's lone."

"Very kind of you, Sandy," said Hugh, and we walked on.

"What then?" I asked when the ponies had fallen behind again.

"Why, superstition lingers here," said Hugh, "and it's supposed she's a witch. To be quite candid with you, the thing interests me a good deal. Supposing you asked me, on oath, whether I believed in witches, I should say 'No.' But if you asked me again, on oath, whether I suspected I believed in them, I should, I think, say 'Yes.' And the fifteenth of this month—to-morrow—is Gavon's Eve."

"And what in Heaven's name is that?" I asked. "And who is Gavon? And what's the trouble?"

"Well, Gavon is the person, I suppose, not saint, who is what we should call the eponymous hero of this district. And the trouble is Sandy's trouble. Rather a long story. But there's a long mile in front of us yet, if you care to be told."

During that mile I heard. Sandy had been engaged a year ago to girl of Gavon who was in service at Inverness. In March last he had gone, without giving notice, to see her, and as he walked up the street in which her mistress's house stood, had met her suddenly face to face, in company with a man whose clipped speech betrayed him English, whose manner a kind of gentleman. He had a flourish of his hat for Sandy, pleasure to see him, and scarcely any need of explanation as to how he came to be walking with Catrine. It was the most natural thing possible, for a city like Inverness boasted its innocent urbanities, and a girl could stroll with a man. And for the time, since also Catrine was so frankly pleased to see him, Sandy was satisfied. But after his return to Gavon, suspicion, fungus-like, grew rank in his mind, with the result that a month ago he had, with infinite pains and blottings, written a letter to Catrine, urging her return and immediate marriage. Thereafter it was known that she had left Inverness; it was known that she had arrived by train at Brora. From Brora she had started to walked across the moor by the path leading just above the Picts' Castle, crossing the rapids to Gavon, leaving her box to be sent by the carrier. But at Gavon she had never arrived. Also it was said that, although it was a hot afternoon, she wore a big cloak.

By this time we had come to the lodge, the lights of which showed dim and blurred through the thick hill-mists that had streamed sullenly down from the higher ground.

"And the rest," said Hugh, "which is as fantastic as this is sober fact, I will tell you later."

Now, a fruit-bearing determination to go to bed is, to my mind, as difficult to ripen as a fruit-bearing determination to get up, and in spite of our long day, I was glad when Hugh (the rest of the men having yawned themselves out of the smoking-room) came back from the hospitable dispensing of bedroom candlesticks with a briskness that denoted that, as far as he was concerned, the distressing determination was not imminent.

"As regards Sandy," I suggested.

"Ah, I also was thinking of that," he said. "Well, Catrine Gordon left Brora, and never arrived here. That is fact. Now for what remains. Have you any remembrance of a woman always alone walking about the moor by the loch? I think I once called your attention to her."

"Yes, I remember," I said. "Not Catrine, surely; a very old woman, awful to look at. Moustache, whiskers, and muttering to herself. Always looking at the ground, too."

"Yes, that is she—not Catrine. Catrine! My word, a May morning! But the other—it is Mrs. Macpherson, reputed witch. Well, Sandy trudges there, a mile and more away, every night to see her. You know Sandy: Adonis of the north. Now, can you account by any natural explanation for that fact? That he goes off after a long day to see an old hag in the hills?"

"It would seem unlikely," said I.

"Unlikely! Well, yes, unlikely."

Hugh got up from his chair and crossed the room to where a bookcase of rather fusty-looking volumes stood between windows. He took a small morocco-backed book from a top shelf.

"Superstitions of Sutherlandshire," he said, as he handed it to me. "Turn to page 128, and read."

"September 15 appears to have been the date of what we may call this devil festival. On the night of that day the powers of darkness held pre-eminent dominion, and over-rode for any who were abroad that night and invoked their aid, the protective Providence of Almighty God. Witches, therefore, above all, were peculiarly potent. On this night any witch could entice to herself the heart and the love of any young man who consulted her on matters of philtre or love charm, with the result that on any night in succeeding years of the same date, he, though he was lawfully affianced and wedded, would for that night be hers. If, however, he should call on the name of God through any sudden grace of the Spirit, her charm would be of no avail. On this night, too, all witches had the power by certain dreadful incantations and indescribable profanities, to raise from the dead those who had committed suicide."

"Top of the next page," said Hugh. "Leave out this next paragraph; it does not bear on this last."

"Near a small village in this country," I read, "called Gavon, the moon at midnight is said to shine through a certain gap or fissure in a wall of rock close beside the river on to the ruins of a Pict castle, so that the light of its beams falls on to a large flat stone erected there near the gate, and supposed by some to be an ancient and pagan altar. At that moment, so the superstition still lingers in the countryside, the evil and malignant spirits which hold sway on Gavon's Eve, are at the zenith of their powers, and those who invoke their aid at this moment and in this place, will, though with infinite peril to their immortal souls, get all that they desire of them."

The paragraph on the subject ended here, and I shut the book.

"Well?" I asked.

"Under favourable circumstances two and two make four," said Hugh.

"And four means"

"This. Sandy is certainly in consultation with a woman who is supposed to be a witch, whose path no crofter will cross after nightfall. He wants to learn, at whatever cost, poor devil, what happened to Catrine. Thus I think it more than possible that to-morrow, at midnight, there will be folk by the Picts' pool. There is another curious thing. I was fishing yesterday, and just opposite the river gate of the castle, someone has set up a great flat stone, which has been dragged (for I noticed the crushed grass) from the débris at the bottom of the slope."

"You mean that the old hag is going to try to raise the body of Catrine, if she is dead?"

"Yes, and I mean to see myself what happens. Come too."

The next day Hugh and I fished down the river from the lodge, taking with us not Sandy, but another gillie, and ate our lunch on the slope of the Picts' Castle after landing a couple of fish there. Even as Hugh had said, a great flat slab of stone had been dragged on to the platform outside the river gate of the castle, where it rested on certain rude supports, which, now that it was in place, seemed certainly designed to receive it. It was also exactly opposite that lancet window in the basaltic rock across the pool, so that if the moon at midnight did shine through it, the light would fall on the stone. This, then, was the almost certain scene of the incantations.

Below the platform, as I have said, the ground fell rapidly away to the level of the pool, which owing to rain on the hills was running very high, and, streaked with lines of greyish bubbles, poured down in amazing and ear-filling volume. But directly underneath the steep escarpment of rock on the far side of the pool it lay foamless and black, a still backwater of great depth. Above the altar-like erection again the ground rose up seven rough-hewn steps to the gate itself, on each side of which, to the height of about four feet, ran the circular wall of the castle. Inside again were the remains of partition walls between the three chambers, and it was in the one nearest to the river gate that we determined to conceal ourselves that night. From there, should the witch and Sandy keep tryst at the altar, any sound of movement would reach us, and through the aperture of the gate itself we could see, concealed in the shadow of the wall, whatever took place at the altar or down below at the pool. The lodge, finally, was but a short ten minutes away, if one went in the direct line, so that by starting at a quarter to twelve that night, we could enter the Picts' Castle by the gate away from the river, thus not betraying our presence to those who might be waiting for the moment when the moon should shine through the lancet window in the wall of rock on to the altar in front of the river gate.

Night fell very still and windless, and when not long before midnight we let ourselves silently out of the lodge, though to the east the sky was clear, a black continent of cloud was creeping up from the west, and had now nearly reached the zenith. Out of the remote fringes of it occasional lightning winked, and the growl of very distant thunder sounded drowsily at long intervals after. But it seemed to me as if another storm hung over our heads, ready every moment to burst, for the oppression in the air was of a far heavier quality than so distant a disturbance could have accounted for. To the east, however, the sky was still luminously clear; the curiously hard edges of the western cloud were star-embroidered, and by the dove-coloured light in the east it was evident that the moonrise over the moor was imminent. And though I did not in my heart believe that our expedition would end in anything but yawns, I was conscious of an extreme tension and rawness of nerves, which I set down to the thunder-charged air.

For noiselessness of footstep we had both put on india-rubber soled shoes, and all the way down to the pool we heard nothing but the distant thunder and our own padded tread. Very silently and cautiously we ascended the steps of the gate away from the river, and keeping close to the wall inside, sidled round to the river gate and peered out. For the first moment I could see nothing, so black lay the shadow of the rock-wall opposite across the pool, but by degrees I made out the lumps and line of the glimmering foam which streaked the water. High as the river was running this morning it was infinitely more voluminous and turbulent now, and the sound of it filled and bewildered the ear with its sonorous roaring. Only under the very base of the rock opposite it ran quite black and unflecked by foam: there lay the deep still surface of the backwater. Then suddenly I saw something black move in the dimness in front of me, and against the grey foam rose up first the head, then the shoulders, and finally the whole figure of a woman coming towards us up the bank. Behind her walked another, a man, and the two came to where the altar of stone had been newly erected and stood there side by side silhouetted against the churned white of the stream. Hugh had seen too, and touched me on the arm to call my attention. So far then he was right: there was no mistaking the stalwart proportions of Sandy.

Suddenly across the gloom shot a tiny spear of light, and momentarily as we watched, it grew larger and longer, till a tall beam, as from some window cut in the rock opposite, was shed on the bank below us. It moved slowly, imperceptibly to the left till it struck full between the two black figures standing there, and shone with a curious bluish gleam on the flat stone in front of them. Then the roar of the river was suddenly overscored by a dreadful screaming voice, the voice of a woman, and from her side her arms shot up and out as if in invocation of some power. At first I could catch none of the words, but soon from repetition they began to convey an intelligible message to my brain, and I was listening as in paralytic horror of nightmare to a bellowing of the most hideous and un-nameable profanity. What I heard I cannot bring myself to record; suffice it to say that Satan was invoked by every adoring and reverent name, that cursing and unspeakable malediction was poured forth on Him whom we hold most holy. Then the yelling voice ceased as suddenly as it had began, and for a moment there was silence again, but for the reverberating river.

Then once more that horror of sound was uplifted.

"So, Catrine Gordon," it cried, "I bid ye in the name of my master and yours to rise from where ye lie. Up with ye—up!"

Once more there was silence; then I heard Hugh at my elbow draw a quick sobbing breath, and his finger pointed unsteadily to the dead black water below the rock. And I too looked and saw.

Right under the rock there appeared a pale subaqueous light, which waved and quivered in the stream. At first it was very small and dim, but as we looked it seemed to swim upwards from remote depths and grew larger till I suppose the space of some square yard was illuminated by it. Then the surface of the water was broken, and a head, the head of a girl, dead-white and with long, flowing hair, appeared above the stream. Her eyes were shut, the corners of her mouth drooped as in sleep, and the moving water stood in a frill round her neck. Higher and higher rose the figure out of the tide, till at last it stood, luminous in itself, so it appeared, up to the middle. The head was bent down over the breast, and the hands clasped together. As it emerged from the water it seemed to get nearer, and was by now half-way across the pool, moving quietly and steadily against the great flood of the hurrying river.

Then I heard a man's voice crying out in a sort of strangled agony.

"Catrine!" it cried; "Catrine! In God's name; in God's name!"

In two strides Sandy had rushed down the steep bank, and hurled himself out into that mad swirl of waters. For one moment I saw his arms flung up into the sky, the next he had altogether gone. And on the utterance of that name the unholy vision had vanished too, while simultaneously there burst in front of us a light so blinding, followed by a crack of thunder so appalling to the senses, that I know I just hid my face in my hands. At once, as if the flood-gates of the sky had been opened, the deluge was on us, not like rain, but like one sheet of solid water, so that we cowered under it. Any hope or attempt to rescue Sandy was out of the question; to dive into that whirlpool of mad water meant instant death, and even had it been possible for any swimmer to live there, in the blackness of the night there was absolutely no chance of finding him. Besides, even if it had been possible to save him, I doubt whether I was sufficiently master of my flesh and blood as to endure to plunge where that apparition had risen.

Then, as we lay there, another horror filled and possessed my mind. Somewhere close to us in the darkness was that woman whose yelling voice just now had made my blood run ice-cold, while it brought the streaming sweat to my forehead. At that moment I turned to Hugh.

"I cannot stop here," I said. "I must run, run right away. Where is She?"

"Did you not see?" he asked.

"No. What happened?"

"The lightning struck the stone within a few inches of where she was standing. We—we must go and look for her."

I followed him down the slope, shaking as if I had the palsy, and groping with my hands on the ground in front of me, in deadly terror of encountering something human. The thunder-clouds had in the last few minutes spread over the moon, so that no ray from the window in the rock guided our search. But up and down the bank from the stone that lay shattered there to the edge of the pool we groped and stumbled, but found nothing. At length we gave it up: it seemed morally certain that she, too, had rolled down the bank after the lightning stroke, and lay somewhere deep in the pool from which she had called the dead.

None fished the pool next day, but men with drag-nets came from Brora. Right under the rock in the backwater lay two bodies, close together, Sandy and the dead girl. Of the other they found nothing.

It would seem, then, that Catrine Gordon, in answer to Sandy's letter, left Inverness in heavy trouble. What happened afterwards can only be conjectured, but it seems likely she took the short cut to Gavon, meaning to cross the river on the boulders above the Picts' pool. But whether she slipped accidentally in her passage, and so was drawn down by the hungry water, or whether unable to face the future, she had thrown herself into the pool, we can only guess. In any case they sleep together now in the bleak, wind-swept graveyard at Brora, in obedience to the inscrutable designs of God.


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hall, Edward

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text: On the Magnet/IV-18

title: On the Magnet/IV-18


text: On the Magnet/IV-19

title: On the Magnet/IV-19


text: On the Magnet/IV-20

title: On the Magnet/IV-20


text:
The Room in the Tower and Other Stories/The Confession of Charles Linkworth

R. TEESDALE had occasion to attend the condemned man once or twice during the week before his execution, and found him, as is often the case, when his last hope of life has vanished, quiet and perfectly resigned to his fate, and not seeming to look forward with any dread to the morning that each hour that passed brought nearer and nearer. The bitterness of death appeared to be over for him: it was done with when he was told that his appeal was refused. But for those days while hope was not yet quite abandoned, the wretched man had drunk of death daily. In all his experience the doctor had never seen a man so wildly and passionately tenacious of life, nor one so strongly knit to this material world by the sheer animal lust of living. Then the news that hope could no longer be entertained was told him, and his spirit passed out of the grip of that agony of torture and suspense, and accepted the inevitable with indifference. Yet the change was so extraordinary that it seemed to the doctor rather that the news had completely stunned his powers of feeling, and he was below the numbed surface, still knit into material things as strongly as ever. He had fainted when the result was told him, and Dr. Teesdale had been called in to attend him. But the fit was but transient, and he came out of it into full consciousness of what had happened.

The murder had been a deed of peculiar horror, and there was nothing of sympathy in the mind of the public towards the perpetrator. Charles Linkworth, who now lay under capital sentence, was the keeper of a small stationery store in Sheffield, and there lived with him his wife and mother. The latter was the victim of his atrocious crime; the motive of it being to get possession of the sum of five hundred pounds, which was this woman's property. Linkworth, as came out at the trial, was in debt to the extent of a hundred pounds at the time, and during his wife's absence from home on a visit to relations, he strangled his mother, and during the night buried the body in the small back-garden of his house. On his wife's return, he had a sufficiently plausible tale to account for the elder Mrs. Linkworth's disappearance, for there had been constant jarrings and bickerings between him and his mother for the last year or two, and she had more than once threatened to withdraw herself and the eight shillings a week which she contributed to household expenses, and purchase an annuity with her money. It was true, also, that during the younger Mrs. Linkworth's absence from home, mother and son had had a violent quarrel arising originally from some trivial point in household management, and that in consequence of this, she had actually drawn her money out of the bank, intending to leave Sheffield next day and settle in London, where she had friends. That evening she told him this, and during the night he killed her.

His next step, before his wife's return, was logical and sound. He packed up all his mother's possessions and took them to the station, from which he saw them despatched to town by passenger train, and in the evening he asked several friends in to supper, and told them of his mother's departure. He did not (logically also, and in accordance with what they probably already knew) feign regret, but said that he and she had never got on well together, and that the cause of peace and quietness was furthered by her going. He told the same story to his wife on her return, identical in every detail, adding, however, that the quarrel had been a violent one, and that his mother had not even left him her address. This again was wisely thought of: it would prevent his wife from writing to her. She appeared to accept his story completely: indeed there was nothing strange or suspicious about it.

For a while he behaved with the composure and astuteness which most criminals possess up to a certain point, the lack of which, after that, is generally the cause of their detection. He did not, for instance, immediately pay off his debts, but took into his house a young man as lodger, who occupied his mother's room, and he dismissed the assistant in his shop, and did the entire serving himself. This gave the impression of economy, and at the same time he openly spoke of the great improvement in his trade, and not till a month had passed did he cash any of the bank-notes which he had found in a locked drawer in his mother's room. Then he changed two notes of fifty pounds and paid off his creditors.

At that point his astuteness and composure failed him. He opened a deposit account at a local bank with four more fifty-pound notes, instead of being patient, and increasing his balance at the savings bank pound by pound, and he got uneasy about that which he had buried deep enough for security in the back-garden. Thinking to render himself safer in this regard, he ordered a cartload of slag and stone fragments, and with the help of his lodger employed the summer evenings when work was over in building a sort of rockery over the spot. Then came the chance circumstance which really set match to this dangerous train. There was a fire in the lost luggage office at King's Cross Station (from which he ought to have claimed his mother's property) and one of the two boxes was partially burned. The company was liable for compensation, and his mother's name on her linen, and a letter with the Sheffield address on it, led to the arrival of a purely official and formal notice, stating that the company were prepared to consider claims. It was directed to Mrs. Linkworth's and Charles Linkworth's wife received and read it.

It seemed a sufficiently harmless document, but it was endorsed with his death-warrant. For he could give no explanation at all of the fact of the boxes still lying at King's Cross Station, beyond suggesting that some accident had happened to his mother. Clearly he had to put the matter in the hands of the police, with a view to tracing her movements, and if it proved that she was dead, claiming her property, which she had already drawn out of the bank. Such at least was the course urged on him by his wife and lodger, in whose presence the communication from the railway officials was read out, and it was impossible to refuse to take it. Then the silent, uncreaking machinery of justice, characteristic of England, began to move forward. Quiet men lounged about Smith Street, visited banks, observed the supposed increase in trade, and from a house near by looked into the garden where ferns were already flourishing on the rockery. Then came the arrest and the trial, which did not last very long, and on a certain Saturday night the verdict. Smart women in large hats had made the court bright with colour, and in all the crowd there was not one who felt any sympathy with the young athletic-looking man who was condemned. Many of the audience were elderly and respectable mothers, and the crime had been an outrage on motherhood, and they listened to the unfolding of the flawless evidence with strong approval. They thrilled a little when the judge put on the awful and ludicrous little black cap, and spoke the sentence appointed by God.

Linkworth went to pay the penalty for the atrocious deed, which no one who had heard the evidence could possibly doubt that he had done with the same indifference as had marked his entire demeanour since he knew his appeal had failed. The prison chaplain who had attended him had done his utmost to get him to confess, but his efforts had been quite ineffectual, and to the last he asserted, though without protestation, his innocence. On a bright September morning, when the sun shone warm on the terrible little procession that crossed the prison yard to the shed where was erected the apparatus of death, justice was done, and Dr. Teesdale was satisfied that life was immediately extinct. He had been present on the scaffold, had watched the bolt drawn, and the hooded and pinioned figure drop into the pit. He had heard the chunk and creak of the rope as the sudden weight came on to it, and looking down he had seen the queer twitchings of the hanged body. They had lasted but a second for the execution had been perfectly satisfactory.

An hour later he made the post-mortem examination and found that his view had been correct: the vertebrae of the spine had been broken at the neck, and death must have been absolutely instantaneous. It was hardly necessary even to make that little piece of dissection that proved this, but for the sake of form he did so. And at that moment he had a very curious and vivid mental impression that the spirit of the dead man was close beside him, as if it still dwelt in the broken habitation of its body. But there was no question at all that the body was dead: it had been dead an hour. Then followed another little circumstance that at the first seemed insignificant though curious also. One of the warders entered, and asked if the rope which had been used an hour ago, and was the hangman's perquisite, had by mistake been brought into the mortuary with the body. But there was no trace of it, and it seemed to have vanished altogether, though it a singular thing to be lost: it was not here; it was not on the scaffold. And though the disappearance was of no particular moment it was quite inexplicable.

Dr. Teesdale was a bachelor and a man of independent means, and lived in a tall-windowed and commodious house in Bedford Square, where a plain cook of surpassing excellence looked after his food, and her husband his person. There was no need for him to practise a profession at all, and he performed his work at the prison for the sake of the study of the minds of criminals. Most crime—the transgression, that is, of the rule of conduct which the human race has framed for the sake of its own preservation—he held to be either the result of some abnormality, of the brain or of starvation. Crimes of theft, for instance, he would by no means refer to one head; often it is true they were the result of actual want, but more often dictated by some obscure disease of the brain. In marked cases it was labelled as kleptomania, but he was convinced there were many others which did not fall directly under the dictation of physical need. More especially was this the case where the crime in question involved also some deed of violence, and he mentally placed underneath this heading, as he went home that evening, the criminal at whose last moments he had been present that morning. The crime had been abominable, the need of money not so very pressing, and the very abomination and unnaturalness of the murder inclined him to consider the murderer as lunatic rather than criminal. He had been, as far as was known, a man of quiet and kindly disposition, a good husband, a sociable neighbour. And then he had committed a crime, just one, which put him outside all pales. So monstrous a deed, whether perpetrated by a sane man or a mad one, was intolerable; there was no use for the doer of it on this planet at all. But somehow the doctor felt that he would have been more at one with the execution of justice, if the dead man had confessed. It was morally certain that he was guilty, but he wished that when there was no longer any hope for him he had endorsed the verdict himself.

He dined alone that evening, and after dinner sat in his study which adjoined the dining-room, and feeling disinclined to read, sat in his great red chair opposite the fireplace, and let his mind graze where it would. At once almost, it went back to the curious sensation he had experienced that morning, of feeling that the spirit of Linkworth was present in the mortuary, though life had been extinct for an hour. It was not the first time, especially in cases of sudden death, that he had felt a similar conviction, though perhaps it had never been quite so unmistakable as it had been to-day. Yet the feeling, to his mind, was quite probably formed on a natural and psychical truth. The spirit—it may be remarked that he was a believer in the doctrine of future life, and the non-extinction of the soul with the death of the body—was very likely unable or unwilling to quit at once and altogether the earthly habitation, very likely it lingered there, earth-bound, for a while. In his leisure hours Dr. Teesdale was a considerable student of the occult, for like most advanced and proficient physicians, he clearly recognised how narrow was the boundary of separation between soul and body, how tremendous the influence of the intangible was over material things, and it presented no difficulty to his mind that a disembodied spirit should be able to communicate directly with those who still were bounded by the finite and material.

His meditations, which were beginning to group themselves into definite sequence, were interrupted at this moment. On his desk near at hand stood his telephone, and the bell rang, not with its usual metallic insistence, but very faintly, as if the current was weak, or the mechanism impaired. However, it certainly was ringing, and he got up and took the combined ear and mouth-piece off its hook.

"Yes, yes," he said, "who is it?"

There was a whisper in reply almost inaudible, and quite unintelligible.

"I can't hear you," he said.

Again the whisper sounded, but with no greater distinctness. Then it ceased altogether.

He stood there, for some half minute or so, waiting for it to be renewed, but beyond the usual chuckling and croaking, which showed, however, that he was in communication with some other instrument, there was silence. Then he replaced the receiver, rang up the Exchange, and gave his number.

"Can you tell me what number rang me up just now?" he asked.

There was a short pause, then it was given him. It was the number of the prison, where he was doctor.

"Put me on to it, please," he said.

This was done.

"You rang me up just now," he said down the tube. "Yes; I am Doctor Teesdale. What is it? I could not hear what you said."

The voice came back quite clear and intelligible.

"Some mistake, sir," it said. "We haven't rang you up."

"But the Exchange tells me you did, three minutes ago."

"Mistake at the Exchange, sir," said the voice.

"Very odd. Well, good-night. Warder Draycott, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir; good-night, sir."

Dr. Teesdale went back to his big arm-chair, still less inclined to read. He let his thoughts wander on for a while, without giving them definite direction, but ever and again his mind kept coming back to that strange little incident of the telephone. Often and often he had been rung up by some mistake, often and often he had been put on to the wrong number by the exchange, but there was something in this very subdued ringing of the telephone bell, and the unintelligible whisperings at the other end that suggested a very curious train of reflection to his mind, and soon he found himself pacing up and down his room, with his thoughts eagerly feeding on a most unusual pasture.

"But it's impossible," he said, aloud.

He went down as usual to the prison next morning, and once again he was strangely beset with the feeling that there was some unseen presence there. He had before now had some odd psychical experiences, and knew that he was a "sensitive"—one, that is, who is capable, under certain circumstances, of receiving supernormal impressions, and of having glimpses of the unseen world that lies about us. And this morning the presence of which he was conscious was that of the man who had been executed yesterday morning. It was local, and he felt it most strongly in the little prison yard, and as he passed the door of the condemned cell. So strong was it there that he would not have been surprised if the figure of the man had been visible to him, and as he passed through the door at the end of the passage, he turned round, actually expecting to see it. All the time, too, he was aware of a profound horror at his heart; this unseen presence strangely disturbed him. And the poor soul, he felt, wanted something done for it. Not for a moment did he doubt that this impression of his was objective, it was no imaginative phantom of his own invention that made itself so real. The spirit of Linkworth was there.

He passed into the infirmary, and for a couple of hours busied himself with his work. But all the time he was aware that the same invisible presence was near him, though its force was manifestly less here than in those places which had been more intimately associated with the man. Finally, before he left, in order to test his theory he looked into the execution shed. But next moment with a face suddenly stricken pale, he came out again, closing the door hastily. At the top of the steps stood a figure hooded and pinioned, but hazy of outline and only faintly visible. But it was visible, there was no mistake about it.

Dr. Teesdale was a man of good nerve, and he recovered himself almost immediately, ashamed of his temporary panic. The terror that had blanched his face was chiefly the effect of startled nerves, not of terrified heart, and yet deeply interested as he was in psychical phenomena, he could not command himself sufficiently to go back there. Or rather he commanded himself, but his muscles refused to act on the message. If this poor earth-bound spirit had any communication to make to him, he certainly much preferred that it should be made at a distance. As far as he could understand, its range was circumscribed. It haunted the prison yard, the condemned cell, the execution shed, it was more faintly felt in the infirmary. Then a further point suggested itself to his mind, and he went back to his room and sent for Warder Draycott, who had answered him on the telephone last night.

"You are quite sure," he asked, "that nobody rang me up last night, just before I rang you up?"

There was a certain hesitation in the man's manner which the doctor noticed.

"I don't see how it could be possible, sir," he said. "I had been sitting close by the telephone for half an hour before, and again before that. I must have seen him, if anyone had been to the instrument."

"And you saw no one?" said the doctor with a slight emphasis.

The man became more markedly ill at ease.

"No, sir, I saw no one," he said, with the same emphasis.

Dr. Teesdale looked away from him.

"But you had perhaps the impression that there was some one there?" he asked, carelessly, as if it was a point of no interest.

Clearly Warder Draycott had something on his mind, which he found it hard to speak of.

"Well, sir, if you put it like that," he began. "But you would tell me I was half asleep, or had eaten something that disagreed with me at my supper."

The doctor dropped his careless manner.

"I should do nothing of the kind," he said, "any more than you would tell me that I had dropped asleep last night, when I heard my telephone bell ring. Mind you, Draycott, it did not ring as usual, I could only just hear it ringing, though it was close to me. And I could only hear a whisper when I put my ear to it. But when you spoke I heard you quite distinctly. Now I believe there was something—somebody—at this end of the telephone. You were here, and though you saw no one, you, too, felt there was someone there."

The man nodded.

"I'm not a nervous man, sir," he said, "and I don't deal in fancies. But there was something there. It was hovering about the instrument, and it wasn't the wind, because there wasn't a breath of wind stirring, and the night was warm. And I shut the window to make certain. But it went about the room, sir, for an hour or more. It rustled the leaves of the telephone book, and it ruffled my hair when it came close to me. And it was bitter cold, sir."

The doctor looked him straight in the face.

"Did it remind you of what had been done yesterday morning?" he asked suddenly.

Again the man hesitated.

"Yes, sir," he said at length. "Convict Charles Linkworth."

Dr. Teesdale nodded reassuringly.

"That's it," he said. "Now, are you on duty to-night?"

"Yes, sir, I wish I wasn't."

"I know how you feel, I have felt exactly the same myself. Now whatever this is, it seems to want to communicate with me. By the way, did you have any disturbance in the prison last night?"

"Yes, sir, there was half a dozen men who had the nightmare. Yelling and screaming they were, and quiet men too, usually. It happens sometimes the night after an execution. I've known it before, though nothing like what it was last night."

"I see. Now, if this—this thing you can't see wants to get at the telephone again to-night, give it every chance. It will probably come about the same time. I can't tell you why, but that usually happens. So unless you must, don't be in this room where the telephone is, just for an hour to give it plenty of time between half-past nine and half-past ten. I will be ready for it at the other end. Supposing I am rung up, I will, when it has finished, ring you up to make sure that I was not being called in—in the usual way."

"And there is nothing to be afraid of, sir!" asked the man.

Dr. Teesdale remembered his own moment of terror this morning, but he spoke quite sincerely.

"I am sure there is nothing to be afraid of," he said, reassuringly.

Dr. Teesdale had a dinner engagement that night, which he broke, and was sitting alone in his study by half past nine. In the present state of human ignorance as to the law which governs the movements of spirits severed from the body, he could not tell the warder why it was that their visits are so often periodic, timed to punctuality according to our scheme of hours, but in scenes of tabulated instances of the appearance of revenants, especially if the soul was in sore need of help, as might be the case here, he found that they came at the same hour of day or night. As a rule, too, their power of making themselves seen or heard or felt grew greater for some little while after death, subsequently growing weaker as they became less earth-bound, or often after that ceasing altogether, and he was prepared to-night for a less indistinct impression. The spirit apparently for the early hours of its disembodiment is weak, like a moth newly broken out from its chrysalis—and then suddenly the telephone bell rang, not so faintly as the night before, but still not with its ordinary imperative tone.

Dr. Teesdale instantly got up, put the receiver to his ear. And what he heard was heart-broken sobbing, strong spasms that seemed to tear the weeper.

He waited for a little before speaking, himself cold with some nameless fear, and yet profoundly moved to help, if he was able.

"Yes, yes," he said at length, hearing his own voice tremble. "I am Dr. Teesdale. What can I do for you? And who are you?" he added, though he felt that it was a needless question.

Slowly the sobbing died down, the whispers took its place, still broken by crying.

"I want to tell, sir—I want to tell—I must tell."

"Yes, tell me, what is it?" said the doctor.

"No, not you—another gentleman, who used to come to see me. Will you speak to him what I say to you?—I can't make him hear me or see me."

"Who are you?" asked Dr. Teesdale suddenly.

"Charles Linkworth. I thought you knew. I am very miserable. I can't leave the prison—and it is cold. Will you send for the other gentleman?"

"Do you mean the chaplain?" asked Dr. Teesdale.

"Yes, the chaplain. He read the service when I went across the yard yesterday. I shan't be so miserable when I have told."

The doctor hesitated a moment. This was a strange story that he would have to tell Mr. Dawkins, the prison chaplain, that at the other end of the telephone was the spirit of the man executed yesterday. And yet he soberly believed that it was so, that this unhappy spirit was in misery and wanted to "tell." There was no need to ask what he wanted to tell.

"Yes, I will ask him to come here," he said at length.

"Thank you, sir, a thousand times. You will make him come, won't you?"

The voice was growing fainter.

"It must be to-morrow night," it said. "I can't speak longer now. I have to go to see—oh, my God, my God."

The sobs broke out afresh, sounding fainter and fainter. But it was in a frenzy of terrified interest that Dr. Teesdale spoke.

"To see what?" he cried. "Tell me what you are doing, what is happening to you?"

"I can't tell you; I mayn't tell you," said the voice very faint. "That is part" and it died away altogether.

Dr. Teesdale waited a little, but there was no further sound of any kind, except the chuckling and croaking of the instrument. He put the receiver on to its hook again, and then became aware for the first time that his forehead was streaming with some cold dew of horror. His ears sang; his heart beat very quick and faint, and he sat down to recover himself. Once or twice he asked himself if it was possible that some terrible joke was being played on him, but he knew that could not be so; he felt perfectly sure that he had been speaking with a soul in torment of contrition for the terrible and irremediable act it had committed. It was no delusion of his senses, either; here in this comfortable room of his in Bedford Square, with London cheerfully roaring round him, he had spoken with the spirit of Charles Linkworth.

But he had no time (nor indeed inclination, for somehow his soul sat shuddering within him) to indulge in meditation. First of all he rang up the prison.

"Warder Draycott?" he asked.

There was a perceptible tremor in the man's voice as he answered.

"Yes, sir. Is it Dr. Teesdale?"

"Yes. Has anything happened here with you?"

Twice it seemed that the man tried to speak and could not. At the third attempt the words came "Yes, sir. He has been here. I saw him go into the room where the telephone is."

"Ah! Did you speak to him?"

"No, sir: I sweated and prayed. And there's half a dozen men as have been screaming in their sleep to-night. But it's quiet again now. I think he has gone into the execution shed."

"Yes. Well, I think there will be no more disturbance now. By the way, please give me Mr. Dawkins's home address."

This was given him, and Dr. Teesdale proceeded to write to the chaplain, asking him to dine with him on the following night. But suddenly he found that he could not write at his accustomed desk, with the telephone standing close to him, and he went upstairs to the drawing-room which he seldom used, except when he entertained his friends. There he recaptured the serenity of his nerves, and could control his hand. The note simply asked Mr. Dawkins to dine with him next night, when he wished to tell him a very strange history and ask his help. "Even if you have any other engagement," he concluded, "I seriously request you to give it up. To-night, I did the same. I should bitterly have regretted it if I had not."

Next night accordingly, the two sat at their dinner in the doctor's dining-room, and when they were left to their cigarettes and coffee the doctor spoke.

"You must not think me mad, my dear Dawkins," he said, "when you hear what I have got to tell you."

Mr. Dawkins laughed.

"I will certainly promise not to do that," he said.

"Good. Last night and the night before, a little later in the evening than this, I spoke through the telephone with the spirit of the man we saw executed two days ago. Charles Linkworth."

The chaplain did not laugh. He pushed back his chair, looking annoyed.

"Teesdale," he said, "is it to tell me this—I don't want to be rude—but this bogey-tale that you have brought me here this evening?"

"Yes. You have not heard half of it. He asked me last night to get hold of you. He wants to tell you something. We can guess, I think, what it is."

Dawkins got up.

"Please let me hear no more of it," he said. "The dead do not return. In what state or under what condition they exist has not been revealed to us. But they have done with all material things."

"But I must tell you more," said the doctor. "Two nights ago I was rung up, but very faintly, and could only hear whispers. I instantly inquired where the call came from and was told it came from the prison. I rang up the prison, and Warder Draycott told me that nobody had rung me up. He, too, was conscious of a presence."

"I think that man drinks," said Dawkins, sharply.

The doctor paused a moment.

"My dear fellow, you should not say that sort of thing," he said. "He is one of the steadiest men we have got. And if he drinks, why not I also?"

The chaplain sat down again.

"You must forgive me," he said, "but I can't go into this. These are dangerous matters to meddle with. Besides, how do you know it is not a hoax?"

"Played by whom?" asked the doctor. "Hark!"

The telephone bell suddenly rang. It was clearly audible to the doctor.

"Don't you hear it?" he said.

"Hear what?"

"The telephone bell ringing."

"I hear no bell," said the chaplain, rather angrily. "There is no bell ringing."

The doctor did not answer, but went through into his study, and turned on the lights. Then he took the receiver and mouthpiece off its hook.

"Yes?" he said, in a voice that trembled. "Who is it? Yes: Mr. Dawkins is here. I will try and get him to speak to you." He went back into the other room.

"Dawkins," he said, "there is a soul in agony. I pray you to listen. For God's sake come and listen."

The chaplain hesitated a moment.

"As you will," he said.

He took up the receiver and put it to his ear.

"I am Mr. Dawkins," he said.

He waited.

"I can hear nothing whatever," he said at length. "Ah, there was something there. The faintest whisper."

"Ah, try to hear, try to hear!" said the doctor.

Again the chaplain listened. Suddenly he laid the instrument down, frowning.

"Something—somebody said, 'I killed her, I confess it. I want to be forgiven.' It's a hoax, my dear Teesdale. Somebody knowing your spiritualistic leanings is playing a very grim joke on you. I can't believe it."

Dr. Teesdale took up the receiver.

"I am Dr. Teesdale," he said. "Can you give Mr. Dawkins some sign that it is you?"

Then he laid it down again.

"He says he thinks he can," he said. "We must wait."

The evening was again very warm, and the window into the paved yard at the back of the house was open. For five minutes or so the two men stood in silence, waiting, and nothing happened. Then the chaplain spoke.

"I think that is sufficiently conclusive," he said.

Even as he spoke a very cold draught of air suddenly blew into the room, making the papers on the desk rustle. Dr. Teesdale went to the window and closed it.

"Did you feel that?" he asked.

"Yes, a breath of air. Chilly."

Once again in the closed room it stirred again.

"And did you feel that?" asked the doctor.

The chaplain nodded. He felt his heart hammering in his throat suddenly.

"Defend us from all peril and danger of this coming night," he exclaimed.

"Something is coming!" said the doctor.

As he spoke it came. In the centre of the room not three yards away from them stood the figure of a man with his head bent over on to his shoulder, so that the face was not visible. Then he took his head in both his hands and raised it like a weight, and looked them in the face. The eyes and tongue protruded, a livid mark was round the neck. Then there came a sharp rattle on the boards of the floor, and the figure was no longer there. But on the floor there lay a new rope.

For a long while neither spoke. The sweat poured off the doctor's face, and the chaplain's white lips whispered prayers. Then by a huge effort the doctor pulled himself together. He pointed at the rope.

"It has been missing since the execution," he said.

Then again the telephone bell rang. This time the chaplain needed no prompting. He went to it at once and the ringing ceased. For a while he listened in silence.

"Charles Linkworth," he said at length, "in the sight of God, in whose presence you stand, are you truly sorry for your sin?"

Some answer inaudible to the doctor came, and the chaplain closed his eyes. And Dr. Teesdale knelt as he heard the words of the Absolution.

At the close there was silence again.

"I can hear nothing more," said the chaplain, replacing the receiver.

Presently the doctor's man-servant came in with the tray of spirits and syphon. Dr. Teesdale pointed without looking to where the apparition had been.

"Take the rope that is there and burn it, Parker," he said.

There was a moment's silence.

"There is no rope, sir," said Parker.


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 Testimonies’ (Eulogiarum or Testimoniorum Liber, arranged after the model of St. Cyprian's ‘Testimonia’), and ‘On St. Paul's Epistles.’ It was also during his stay at Rome that he made the acquaintance of Celestius, afterwards his foremost disciple, and began by writings, especially letters, to show plainly that he had rejected the dominant theology upon the points of human freewill and divine grace.

Pelagius's doctrines dealt with six chief points, as his opponents sometimes divided them: original sin, infant baptism, the effect of the fall of Adam, freewill in man, divine grace, and predestination; but the gist of them all is contained in the single point on which the ninth article of the English church condemns his followers as ‘talking vainly,’ viz. whether or not ‘the condition of man after the fall is such that he … has no power to do good works without the grace of God.’ He annulled that grace, said Augustine, by representing it as the payment of what was strictly due. His position certainly rested on two particular denials—first of the necessity of supernatural and directly assisting grace in order to any true service of God; secondly, of the transmission of the corruption of human nature and of physical death to the descendants of the first man, in consequence of his transgression. Personally he wrote in support of the divinity of Christ, but some of his followers were less explicit, and after his death his party became somewhat connected with the Nestorian. As to the necessity of infant baptism, Pelagius distinguished between an eternal life that the unbaptised could possibly enter, and a kingdom of heaven that was closed to them.

About 409 Pelagius went with Celestius to Sicily, to escape Alaric's attack upon Rome, and soon after passed on to Africa, missing St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, in his own city, but meeting him in Carthage, where the bishop was then busy with the Donatist controversy. Thence Pelagius sailed to Palestine, where he met Jerome at Bethlehem; while Celestius, staying behind in Africa, and going beyond his leader in the boldness and definiteness of his heresy, was accused, tried, and condemned, on seven counts of false doctrine, by a synod at Carthage (412). At the same time Augustine, though strongly opposed to ‘Pelagianism,’ as doctrines in favour of the freedom of the will came to be called, received a letter from Pelagius himself, to which he replied in ‘friendly terms.’ But a little later he received another work by Pelagius, with a letter, from two ‘youths,’ Timasius and James, asking him to satisfy them on various points in it, and this book seems to have alarmed him.

Next year accordingly (415) Orosius, sent by Augustine to Palestine to watch Pelagius, accused him of heresy before a synod at Jerusalem (28 July 415). Pelagius was at first disposed to question the right of the African church to dictate in the matter, but finally decided to plead, and justified his doctrines at length. The presiding bishop, John of Jerusalem, showed him some favour; and the result was the acquittal of Pelagius of any definite false doctrines. On this the ‘Augustinians’ appealed to Rome, declaring that Pelagius's Latin was not properly understood in Syria; that his interpreter was incompetent; and that the Eastern judges had not grasped the facts.

The appeal to Rome was allowed, as a compromise, by the synod of Jerusalem; but at the end of 415 Pelagius was again indicted before a synod at Diospolis, or Lydda, in Palestine, by two (deposed) western prelates—Heros of Arles, and Lazarus of Aix. Fourteen bishops again met together to decide upon an appeal really coming, as was supposed, from Jerome and his party at Bethlehem. The ‘miserable conventicle of Diospolis’ as Jerome calls it, came to the same result as the synod of Jerusalem, and the main hope of the predestinarian party now rested on the expected sympathy and support of Innocent I. The Roman appeal was accordingly repeated in 416 by over sixty-nine bishops in the synod of Carthage, and by sixty-one more in a synod in Numidia; and a letter was addressed to the great western see by Augustine and four other bishops (Aurelius, Alypius, Evodius, and Possidius), who also forwarded to Rome the book of Pelagius which Timasius and James had before sent to Augustine, with the latter's answer in the treatise ‘De Natura et Gratia.’

Innocent answered these various addresses by three letters, written on 27 Jan. 417, in which he condemned Pelagius's distinctive doctrines without reserve, and called upon him to abjure his heresy, or to leave the communion of the church.

But on the death of the ‘first great pope,’ 12 March 417, his successor Zosimus showed a very different spirit. He was mystified, it was said, by Celestius, whose plausible tongue smoothed away difficulties, and who offered boldly to condemn all that Innocent or the apostolic see judged heretical. To the pope his statement appeared to be ‘catholic, plain, and explicit.’ Accordingly Zosimus deprived and anathematised Heros


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 the Trinity, which are defended as Peirce's in ‘The Truth and Importance of the Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity,’ &c., 1736, 8vo, a publication against Waterland, which has been ascribed to Hallett.

 PEIRSON. [See also and .]

PEIRSON, FRANCIS (1757–1781), major, the eldest son of Francis Peirson of Lowthorpe, Yorkshire, was born in 1757, and entered the army at an early age, rising to the rank of major in April 1780, when he was appointed to the 95th regiment, which was shortly afterwards stationed in Jersey. At this period the Channel Islands were subjected to the constant danger of attacks from the French, who made several futile attempts to gain possession. By far the most important of these raids was that of 6 Jan. 1781, known as the ‘battle of Jersey,’ when the French, under the Baron de Rullecour, a desperate adventurer, landed under cover of night and took possession of the town of St. Helier, making the lieutenant-governor, Major Moses Corbet, a prisoner in his bed. Under these circumstances the command of the troops devolved upon the youthful Peirson. Rullecour succeeded in inducing Corbet to sign a capitulation, and Elizabeth Castle was summoned to surrender, but the officer in command boldly refused to obey the order. Meanwhile the regular troops and the island militia, under the command of Major Peirson, advanced in two divisions towards the Royal Square, then the market-place, where a vigorous engagement took place, resulting in great loss to the French, who, though fighting with great obstinacy, became disordered and were compelled to retire. The victory was complete, but had been gained at the heavy price of the life of a promising young officer, for in the very moment of victory the gallant Peirson was shot through the heart, and fell dead in the arms of his grenadiers. Rullecour himself was mortally wounded, and most of the French soldiers were taken prisoners. Peirson, who had only attained his twenty-fifth year, was interred in the parish church of St. Helier with all the honours of war, and in the presence of the States of the island, who caused a magnificent monument to be erected to his memory. Peirson's death forms the subject of Copley's famous picture now in the National Gallery at London.

 PELAGIUS (fl. 400?), heresiarch, was probably born about 370. His British birth is asserted by Prosper, Gennadius, Marius Mercator, Orosius, and St. Augustine; a tradition records his native name to have been, of which ‘Pelagius’ (‘Seaborn’) was the Greek translation. Jerome more precisely calls him a ‘Scot’—i.e. an Irishman. It is stated that he was a monk; and, according to one account, he was once at Bangor monastery; but both Pope Zosimus and Augustine's friend Orosius speak of him as a layman. It is improbable that he is the Pelagius whose desertion St. John Chrysostom lamented in a letter (to Olympias) of 405; but it is certain that he came to Rome early in the fifth century, and almost immediately became prominent as a theological disputant.

Mercator says he borrowed his ‘distinctive doctrines’ from Rufinus the Syrian. According to Jerome, Rufinus was a theologian of Aquileia, a pupil of the famous Theodore of Mopsuestia, and a student of Origen. Rufinus visited Rome while Anastasius was pope, i.e. between 398 and 402. Pelagius doubtless met Rufinus in the capital not later than 401, and it appears that he did not leave till 409. While he resided at Rome Pelagius made the acquaintance of Augustine and Paulinus of Nola, who spoke of him with great respect.

It was probably at Rome that Pelagius wrote his three works, ‘On the Trinity,’ ‘On


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 1719). They corresponded on the case with their London brethren. Peirce also wrote to his London friends, among whom the most influential was John Shute Barrington, afterwards first Viscount Barrington [q. v.] Barrington, an independent, was the parliamentary leader of the dissenting interest. He had defeated a presbyterian amendment to the bill for repealing the ‘Schism Act,’ which would have introduced a new test in regard to the Trinity, on the express ground of Peirce's alleged heresies. He now brought the Exeter dispute before the London committee, representing the civil interests of dissenters. The committee agreed (5 Feb.) to lay a draft of ‘advices for peace’ before the whole body of London ministers of the three denominations; hence the Salters' Hall conferences, which began on 19 Feb., and came to a rupture on 3 March [see ]. The rupture was in reference, not to the ‘advices’ themselves, but to the spirit in which they should be tendered. Both sections endorsed the principle of uncompromising independency, namely, that each congregation is sole judge of the errors which disqualify its ministers. The non-subscribing section sent its ‘advices,’ with an orthodox letter, on 17 March; the ‘advices’ of the subscribing section, with an orthodox preamble, followed on 7 April; but the Exeter affair had already come to an issue, without any appeal to the congregation.

On 4 March the clerical council of seven gave judgment in writing, to the effect that denial of Christ's ‘true and proper divinity’ is a disqualifying error. On 5 March the ‘thirteen’ asked for an explicit statement on this head from the Exeter ministers. Peirce urged that the advices from London should be waited for; but the ‘thirteen’ declined to recognise ‘advices’ in which ‘anabaptists’ took part. Peirce then declined to subscribe to any proposition not in scripture (not even ‘that three and two make five’). Hallett declined also; Withers faltered, and ultimately offered to subscribe the Nicene creed; Lavington alone gave complete satisfaction. On 6 March the four ‘proprietors’ of James's Meeting closed it against Peirce and Hallett; they were permitted, however, on the following Sunday (8 March) to preach at the Little Meeting. But on 10 March the ‘proprietors’ of the several meeting-houses held a joint meeting, and agreed, ‘without consulting the people,’ to exclude Peirce and Hallett from them all. They were excluded also from their share in the income of the Elwill trust for dissenting ministers of Exeter (unpublished letter of Peirce, 11 Sept. 1721). They still remained members of the ‘Exeter assembly.’ A temporary meeting-place was secured by 15 March, and a new building, the Mint Meeting, was soon erected (opened 27 Dec.) The congregation, which numbered about three hundred, was classed as presbyterian in the lists of the London fund of that name; but Peirce declined any designation except Christian. In May 1719 the ‘Exeter assembly’ called for a subscription from its members, identical with that adopted by the London subscribers. Peirce, with eighteen others, declined and seceded. The seceders subscribed a paper (6 May) repudiating the charge of Arianism, and making a confession in biblical terms. Peirce was not readmitted as a member, but was present as a visitor in September 1723. The ministers of Mint Meeting were admitted in 1753; the succession of ministers was maintained till 1810; subsequently (before 1817) the building was sold to Wesleyan methodists, who erected another on its site.

Peirce never rose above the mortification inflicted on him by his summary ejection. Friends of position, such as Peter King, first lord King [q. v.], stood by him; but he deeply felt the loss of leadership and popularity. His numerous pamphlets in self-defence are written with a strong pen; the ‘Letter’ to Eveleigh is an admirable piece of satire. He moved out of Exeter to a country house at St. Leonard's, in the suburbs, and lived much among his books, busying himself with paraphrases of St. Paul's Epistles, in continuation of the series begun by Locke. Fox has left a very graphic account of him. He seems to have been a moody man, of dignified and polished manners, with much reserve, yet humorous and even jocose when the ice was broken. His theological writing is scholastic and unimpassioned, but when moved he preached with great fervour, using few notes. His means were ample, but he is said to have been remiss in the duty of returning hospitality. He had ancient notions of domestic strictness, and ‘condescended to the discipline of the horsewhip.’ Fox asserts that, having written against the ring in marriage, he refused to attend his daughter's wedding; but this is improbable, for Peirce maintains that the ring is ‘a civil rite, and not unlawful in itself,’ and therefore to be used so long as it is prescribed by law. Nor, according to Fox, would he sit for his portrait, since ‘pictures originally were the occasion of worshipping images.’ His disuse of exercise led to ‘the swelling of his legs and other disorders.’ At length he broke a blood-vessel in his lungs, lingered a few days in great composure, and died on 30 March 1726. He was buried in the church-


text: The New International Encyclopædia/Harrison, Benjamin (patriot)


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76

219. F 5.

220. D 1.

221. C 1.

222. D 6. Black must connect.

223. O 9.

224. M 9.

225. K 13.

226. K 11.

227. J 7.

228. H 6.

229. H 10.

230. G 12.

231. H 12.

232. K 7.

233. N 7.

234. O 8.

235. S 5. By sacrificing one stone White forces Black to fill two spaces.

236. Q 4.

237. T 8.

238. T 7.

239. J 1.

240. K 2.

241. K 1.

242. A 13.

243. L 19.

244. N 19.

245. P 19.

246. O 18.

247. A 14.

248. L 14.

249. K 15.

250. M 5.

251. N 5.

252. K 8.

253. Q 9. ("Ko tsugu.")

Here the game is left as finished in the published report, but the remaining moves are not all strictly speaking "Dame." There are quite a number of moves to be made before we can proceed to the count. The first question is, naturally, what stones are dead, and we find that White has three dead stones at S 12, S 5, and K 4. Black has three dead stones at J 15, O 4 and R 18. The white stones at P, Q and R 13, are not yet dead. They have aggressive possibilities, and must actually be surrounded. As near as we can judge the game would proceed as follows:

First: Necessary although obvious moves which are not strictly "Dame."

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text: On the Magnet/V-2

title: On the Magnet/V-2


text: On the Magnet/V-3

title: On the Magnet/V-3


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The New International Encyclopædia/Harrison, Benjamin (President)

HARRISON, BENJAMIN (1833–1901). The twenty-third President of the United States, born at North Bend, Ohio, August 20, 1833. His father, John Scott Harrison (1804–78), a son of President William Henry Harrison, represented the Whigs in Congress from 1853 to 1857. Benjamin passed his early years on his father's farm, studied two years at Farmers College, at College Hill, near Cincinnati; graduated at Miami University in 1852 as fourth in his class, and after studying law in Cincinnati, married the daughter of Rev. J. W. Scott, and settled in Indianapolis in 1854. In 1860 he was elected reporter of the Supreme Court of Indiana, and in a political debate with Thomas A. Hendricks soon afterwards acquired reputation as a speaker. He entered the Federal Army as second lieutenant in July, 1862, assisted in organizing the Seventieth Indiana Regiment, was promoted in August, 1862, to be colonel, served in Kentucky and Tennessee, led a charge at Resaca, Ga., May 15, 1864, in which one-third of his command was killed or disabled; commanded his brigade with signal bravery at Kenesaw Mountain, June 29, to July 3, 1864, and at Peachtree Creek, July 20; took part in the operations around Nashville, and on January 23, 1865, was brevetted brigadier-general of volunteers “for ability and manifest energy and gallantry in command of brigade.” Returning to civil life, he resumed his occupation of reporter of the Supreme Court, but in 1868 declined reëlection. In 1876 he was the Republican candidate for Governor of Indiana, but was defeated, though running 2000 votes ahead of his ticket. In 1878

he was appointed a member of the Mississippi River Commission. In 1880 he was elected United States Senator, taking his seat March 4, 1881, and during his term of office opposed alien ownership of large tracts of land and the Blair Educational Bill; favored civil-service reform; and was one of a committee to perfect and report a bill restricting Chinese immigration. In 1888, at the Republican Convention in Chicago, he was nominated for the Presidency, receiving 84 votes on the first ballot, 217 on the fourth, and 544 on the eighth. In the ensuing election he received 233 electoral votes to Cleveland's 168, Levi P. Morton, of New York, being elected Vice-President. His administration was marked by no especially conspicuous features; but during it the Pan-American Congress, the initiation of the policy of commercial reciprocity (q.v.), and the attempt to annex Hawaii to the United States attracted much attention. The industrial situation was much altered by the McKinley Tariff of October 1, 1890; the public debt was reduced, and a stable national currency maintained; civil-service reform was extended; the Louisiana Lottery was abolished; the condition of both the army and the navy was improved; and many highly creditable appointments to office were made, especially in the Federal judiciary. In the summer of 1892 Harrison's Secretary of State, Mr. Blaine (q.v.), resigned and became an avowed candidate for the Presidential nomination; but Harrison was again nominated, only to be defeated in the election by his predecessor, Grover Cleveland (q.v.), receiving 145 electoral votes. After leaving office he accepted a professorship of international law at the Leland Stanford University, California. During the remaining years of his life he devoted himself to the practice of law, being retained in several cases of national importance, and in 1899 appearing as counsel for Venezuela before the commission appointed to arbitrate the boundary dispute with England. He was the principal representative of the United States at The Hague Conference (1899). His death occurred after a brief illness, at Indianapolis, March 13, 1901. He wrote numerous magazine articles, made a number of able speeches on public occasions, and published This Country of Ours (1897), in which he gave an interesting description of the practical workings of the National Government. Another book, Views of an Ex-President, was published posthumously in 1901. Consult: Wilson (editor). The Presidents of the United States (New York, 1894); and the campaign biography by Lew Wallace, Life of General Benjamin Harrison (Philadelphia, 1886). For an account of Harrison's Administration, see the article .


text: Balkans: What You Need To Know About U.S. Sanctions


text: On the Magnet/V-4

title: On the Magnet/V-4


text: On the Magnet/V-5

title: On the Magnet/V-5


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The New International Encyclopædia/Scharf, John Thomas

SCHARF, shärf, (1843-98). An American antiquary and historian, born in Baltimore, Md. He served in both the Confederate army and navy, was several times wounded, and once narrowly escaped being put to death as a spy. Later he engaged in journalism and in Baltimore was at different times editor of the Evening News, Sunday Telegram, and Morning Herald. He devoted much attention to history, and made a collection of many thousands of documents, pamphlets, and other historical material, which he gave in 1891 to Johns Hopkins University. His publications include: Chronicles of Baltimore (1874); History of Maryland (3 vols., 1879-80); History of Baltimore City and County (1881); History of Western Maryland (2

vols., 1882); History of Philadelphia (3 vols., 1884); History of the Confederate States Navy (1887); and History of Delaware (1888).


text: On the Magnet/V-6

title: On the Magnet/V-6


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The New International Encyclopædia/Scharnhorst, Gerhard Johann David von

SCHARNHORST, schärn'hōrst, (1755-1813). A Prussian general, founder of the modern Prussian military system. He was born in Hanover. He entered the military service of his native State in 1778, was teacher in the artillery school of Hanover about 1780, and was engaged in the campaigns in Flanders in 1793-95. In 1801 he was called into the Prussian service and became director of the Prussian military school. He served in the field in the disastrous campaigns of 1806-07, and was then made president of the commission charged with the reorganization of the Prussian army and head of the War Department. Working in harmony with the other regenerators who came to Prussia in her need, he accomplished this in spite of the distrust and opposition of the old-time Prussians. Universal service was not secured until his death, but he laid down the principles and prepared the way for its adoption. Enrollments of foreigners were abolished, corporal punishments were limited to flagrant cases of insubordination, promotion for merit was established, and the military administration organized and simplified. The organization of the Landwehr or reserve was begun. So promptly were the results of this work seen that the Prussian army, which had been so ineffective before Tilsit, was able to play an important part in the final campaigns against Napoleon. Scharnhorst was wounded in the battle at Grossgörschen May 2, 1813, and died at Prague June 28th. Consult his biography by Klippel (3 vols., Leipzig, 1869-71), which is devoted especially to his reforms and their results.


text: On the Magnet/V-7

title: On the Magnet/V-7


text: On the Magnet/V-8

title: On the Magnet/V-8


text: On the Magnet/V-9

title: On the Magnet/V-9


text: On the Magnet/V-10

title: On the Magnet/V-10


text: On the Magnet/V-11

title: On the Magnet/V-11


text: On the Magnet/V-12

title: On the Magnet/V-12


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The New International Encyclopædia/Schön, Heinrich Theodor von

SCHÖN, shẽn, (1773-1856). A Prussian statesman, born in Lithuania. He studied law and political science at Königsberg. In 1793 he entered the Government service and was rapidly promoted, serving as Governor. After the Peace of Tilsit he rendered great assistance in carrying out the reforms of Stein and Hardenberg, and to him is attributed the authorship of the Politisches Testament, which Stein issued upon his retirement from office. In 1816 Schön was appointed Governor of West Prussia, and eight years afterwards of the whole Province of Prussia. Under his administration many reforms were made. He was an ardent liberal, and it was partly through his efforts that upon the accession of the new King in 1840 a demand was made for a constitution. Schön was made Minister of State, but his ideas were too advanced for Frederick William IV., and he found it expedient in 1842 to retire from political life. His memoirs and correspondence were published by his son under the title of Aus den Papieren des Ministers und Burggrafen von Marienburg Theodor von Schön (1875-83). Consult Seeley, Life and Times of Stein (Cambridge, 1878).