The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

A Strange Revenge. 451
" Aye, it's a pity, though, the laird's wife is dead—a pity.
I would like to have seen sprightly, buxom Jessie in her old
age. Then, too, the blow I am hoping to inflict would have
been all the more crushing. How different my life would
have been but for that whipper-snapper at the Castle?
Instead of scraping together a fortune by my wits in the
States, I suppose I would have grown up a decent, jogging
farmer, very likely would have been a laird by this time ;
at any rate an elder of the Kirk, and a pattern that all
might do well !
" What am I ? An adventurer my most intimate
friends would say ; a miserly collector of gold through the
gulling of the public. Well—so be it. It makes revenge
the sweeter. By the grave of my wife, I say again, that he
who was the means of driving me from an honest life shall
suffer."
At this vehement termination of his soliloquy, the
Professor started up and began to pace the room. It was
an apartment not wholly devoted either to the accommoda-
tion or the study of books. In the centre stood a table
littered with small bundles of herbs, while the presence of
pestles, vials, bottles, containing various acids, and oils,
with two microscopes, showed that some chemical pro-
cesses had lately been carried through. On a side table lay
the apparently inanimate carcases of a cat, two rabbits, a
hare, and a fox, each labelled with date, hour, and minute.
The Professor stopped suddenly before the table, and lifted
up one of the rabbits by the head.
" Stark and stiff as a poker," he muttered. " So far,
Pllspeth, results prove thee no liar, though there's a whiff of
brimstone and the devil about your ugly body.' Midnight
will see whether even a witch can possess the secret of an
antidote which will recall these stiffened, glassy-eyed brutes
to life. If you have the antidote, and confess it not for
money, then I'll wring it from you with my hands at }our
accursed throat."