Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 | Page 8

on me, thou most beautiful of all the Angels--even for His

name's sake." All eyes were turned towards the black heavens, and then
to the raving child. Her mother clasped her to her bosom, afraid that
terror had turned her brain--and her father going to the door, surveyed
an ampler space of the sky. She flew to his side, and clinging to him
again, exclaimed in a wild outcry, "On her forehead a star! on her
forehead a star! And oh! on what lovely wings she is floating away,
away into eternity! The Angel, father, is calling me by my Christian
name, and I must no more abide on earth; but, touching the hem of her
garment, be wafted away to heaven!" Sudden as a bird let loose from
the hand, darted the maiden from her father's bosom, and with her face
upward to the skies, pursued her flight. Young and old left the house,
and at that moment the forked lightning came from the crashing cloud,
and struck the whole tenement into ruins. Not a hair on any head was
singed; and with one accord the people fell down upon their knees.
From the eyes of the child, the Angel, or Vision of the Angel, had
disappeared; but on her return to heaven, the Celestial heard the hymn
that rose from those that were saved, and above all the voices, the small
sweet silvery voice of her whose eyes alone were worthy of beholding
a Saint Transfigured.
For several hundred years has that farm belonged to the family of the
Logans, nor has son or daughter ever stained the name--while some
have imparted to it, in its humble annals, what well may be called lustre.
Many a time have we stood when a boy, all alone, beginning to be
disturbed by the record of heroic or holy lives, in the kirkyard, beside
the GRAVE OF THE MARTYRS--the grave in which Christian and
Hannah Logan, mother and daughter, were interred. Many a time have
we listened to the story of their deaths, from the lips of one who well
knew how to stir the hearts of the young, till "from their eyes they
wiped the tears that sacred pity had engendered." Nearly a hundred
years old was she that eloquent narrator--the Minister's mother--yet she
could hear a whisper, and read the Bible without spectacles--although
we sometimes used to suspect her of pretending to be reading off the
Book, when, in fact, she was reciting from memory. The old lady often
took a walk in the kirkyard--and being of a pleasant and cheerful nature,
though in religious principle inflexibly austere, many were the most
amusing anecdotes that she related to us and our compeers, all huddled

round her, "where heaved the turf in many a mouldering heap." But the
evening converse was always sure to have a serious termination--and
the venerable matron could not be more willing to tell, than we to hear
again and again, were it for the twentieth repetition, some old tragic
event that gathered a deeper interest from every recital, as if on each we
became better acquainted with the characters of those to whom it had
befallen, till the chasm that time had dug between them and us
disappeared, and we felt for the while that their happiness or misery
and ours were essentially interdependent. At first she used, we well
remember, to fix her solemn spirit-like eyes on our faces, to mark the
different effects her story produced on her hearers; but ere long she
became possessed wholly by the pathos of her own narrative, and with
fluctuating features and earnest action of head and hands poured forth
her eloquence, as if soliloquising among the tombs.
"Ay, ay, my dear boys, that is the grave o' the Martyrs. My father saw
them die. The tide o' the far-ebbed sea was again beginning to flow, but
the sands o' the bay o' death lay sae dry, that there were but few spots
where a bairn could hae wat its feet. Thousands and tens o' thousands
were standing a' roun' the edge of the bay--that was in shape just like
that moon--and then twa stakes were driven deep into the sand, that the
waves o' the returning sea michtna loosen them--and my father, who
was but a boy like ane o' yourselves noo, waes me, didna he see wi' his
ain een Christian Logan, and her wee dochter Hannah, for she was but
eleven years auld--hurried alang by the enemies o' the Lord, and tied to
their accursed stakes within the power o' the sea. He who holds the
waters in the hollow o' his hand, thocht my father, will not suffer them
to choke the prayer within those holy lips--but what kent he o' the
dreadfu' judgments o'