462 A Tale of the Pyrenees. LNov- 
lay concealed hard by ; and the discovery of his name was left to the con- 
jectures of the curious. 
Dominic having been carried home, was examined minutely concerning 
the circumstances of this event ; but the nicest sagacity of the village 
sages, who did not fail to attend his sick-bed, doubtless from pure cha- 
rity—the inquiries of many, and scrutiny of a few—all were insufficient to 
explain away the mystery of so unprovoked an attack upon a harmless 
wayfarer. The night passed; and the next morning, which served to 
summon home the general mass of those who had attended the fair at 
Oleron, shewed that one at least, and not an inglorious one, was still 
absent from his usual haunts. Etchehon, a name pronounced but seldom 
in accents of unconcern—a name associated with many suspicions, many 
opposite feelings of pity and terror, marvel and hostility—Etchehon, the 
wild, the desperate, the wretched—he stood not amongst them as he used 
to stand—the leader of a few careless spirits—the cast-away, the aban- 
doned of the majority! He was watched, he was hunted for—not from 
love or anxiety for his welfare, but from the mischievous and cruel 
longing which unkind tempers manifest to affix on some one, even though . 
he be a familiar companion, the authorship and unravelment of a 
mystery which might else pass away and be forgotten. But this neigh- 
bourly care for his discovery was all without its reward ;-—he came not 
—he was not heard of ; and the disaster of poor Dominic was imputed 
to the scape-gallows wretch, whose memory was treated with even less 
of charity than his conduct when present and in the midst of them. 
The character of Etchehon, the miserable subject of so much village 
talk, was involved in contradiction, but unhappily darkened by suspi-< 
cions which almost wore the aspect of certainty. Those who remem- 
bered him in his younger days spoke of him as a strange, flighty, and 
daring man ; but kind in his disposition, capable of the loftiest sentiments, 
tender and benevolent. The rough inhabitants of Barcus could trace 
the progress of his character, without detecting the reasons for its 
changes. They found him more and more lost in fancies and abstrac-~ 
tions: he became restless in his habits ; and for a charge of forgery, ill 
substantiated, he was doomed to a long imprisonment, from which he 
issued more gloomy and disturbed than ever. Whispers, dark and ter- 
rible, were passed respecting his course of life; his home was rarely 
crossed by his heavy foot ; and the credulity of the neighbours, fed by 
rumours studiously circulated, at length invested him with attributes 
almost fiendish. These short-sighted creatures made him what he was. 
The imputations thrown upon him were felt, though not heard perhaps ; 
and Etchehon’s spirit fell beneath the host of ill-will, in itself adopted 
as a defence against him—like the warrior who lay overwhelmed by the 
shields and bucklers of his enemy. What has truth to say in vindication 
of this imputed sinfulness? His whole story must be recounted. 
At an early period of life, the enthusiastic temper of Etchehon urged _ 
him to an inconsiderate marriage with a peasant girl of the neighbour-— 
hood. His bold and manly bearing at first pleased the child; but the 
disproportion between their characters soon estranged him from the 
heart of her hearts, and another was admitted to the sanctuary, in which 
he still breathed, and hoped only to live, as in the temple of his idol. 
Whether his own waywardness or her inconstancy served rather to expel 
him from her love, I cannot say. There are those who, having a loftier 
