The Scarlet Bat
A SINGLE, heavy blast of wind, emerging from the depths of the forest that had ever been the one rampier of the place against the force of the elements, swept slowly through the town, rustling and scattering the thin cloud of last year’s leaves, and searching the empty streets in a kind of forlorn questing. Falling thus, and, without harbinger, followed by the same oppressive quietness of that unseasonably sultry spring day, it seemed rather moral than natural; it was like a great, deepdrawn sigh, not, indeed, of relief, but the inevitable vent of long-suppressed emotion. As such, moreover, it was wholly in keeping with circumstance. For fair Alice Lee, the minister’s only child, and the loveliest maiden of the shore-side, alike of feature and of spirit, had just, been hidden from all kindly mortal eyes, in the still bare and unkindly ground of the churchyard. So gentle, modest, tender a flower of humanity being thus untimely blighted, nature herself, as yet scarcely daunted by the presence of this young colony, might well have heaved this throbbing sigh. Or, if one liked not that interpretation, one might have believed it to be merely the general single exhalation of an hundred human sighs that burst forth, involuntary, even as the townsfolk stepped back across their thresholds, and separately, yet with one accord, realized that all was over: the youths who had been her lovers; the maidens, who, unable to cherish, or even to conceive, an envious or unkindly thought against that pure creature, had been little less than lovers; the little children, whose affection held an element of awe or adoration; the elders, whose faces, however stern and grim, had never failed to melt into smiles at sight of the sweet face shining out from the dimness of the minister’s pew, — these all, the town itself as a whole, in truth, sharing the deep grief of the bereft widowed father.
Alice Lee had died in the springtime, but early in that bleak New England spring; too early to have “ store of flowers stuck upon her winding-sheet.” They spoke of this among themselves on that sad day, when, at the twilight hour, for the first time since the shock of the mournful tidings had stricken them silent, tongues were loosed for the discussion inevitably following all sublunary matters. She had had their all, indeed, but that was scarcely a handful of pale, scentless, housegrown blossoms, and the snow-white maiden was known to have loved, from her babyhood, the bright and cheerful hues of nature’s own children.
Thence, naturally, their thoughts and words turned to other circumstances of the dead girl’s life, and particularly, with this association, to Matthew Ballantyne, her lover, — her one lover, we may call him, for to him alone, out of all who had longed to be so named and considered, had fallen the key of the pure marble chamber of her heart. It was not yet a year, as some of her friends recalled now, — last year’s latest roses had shed their petals on the day when, the young lovers having plighted their troth, Matthew Ballantyne had gone bravely to the stern and reverend minister to ask the formal sanction of a treasure already virtually his own. And some few wondered if today the minister in his loneliness thought, perchance, of this; or had any jealousy that his cold, unyielding refusal had had aught to do with the death — that was, in truth, a gradual fading away — of the gentle, obedient daughter.
Some few, perchance; but they were only the younger and less wise of Alice’s Puritan town-fellows. The elders presently found voice to denounce Matthew Ballantyne’s behavior on that solemn day, — behavior which began to loom against their horizon larger and darker as, Alice’s form being removed forever from their sight, her image ceased to dominate their thoughts. Throughout, indeed, they had upheld their pastor in what some of the silly maids had deemed a severe course, the undemurring obedience of Alice herself seeming to approve their wisdom. But even had he won any sympathy of regard theretofore, — this strange painter youth from overseas, none knew precisely whence, — his demeanor of that day would have sent it to the winds.
“Was it not enough,” cried Dame Sparrow, “that he should have entered the meeting-house in such indecorous garb, with his unkempt yellow locks and flaunting scarlet neckcloth, — was this not enough, but must he sit, in the presence of all, with unmanly tears streaming down his face!”
“Aye, but tears befit that face,” cried another, “ maid-pale and girlish as it is!”
They had foregathered at the town pump on the morning following Alice Lee’s funeral. A chill morning it was, and dark with lowering rain clouds; and over their white caps, obscuring the comeliness these gave to each strong-featured face, the women had drawn folds of their dark woolen shawls.
“And who is he?” demanded the beadle’s wife, unconsciously emphasizing her question by so hard a grasp of the tiny hand in hers that her little son cried out in pain. Hushing the child sternly, she repeated her words. “And who, pray, is this Matthew Ballantyne? A vagrant painter, and the outcast lover of the sainted maiden, whose obsequies his very presence would have polluted, even if his monstrous demeanor ” —
“Relate it to me, if you will, good Mistress Carey,” interrupted a younger, but not less hard-featured woman. “Our pew, as you know, is under the very pulpit, and I have seen no one since.”
“’T was a sight well missed,” returned Mistress Carey grimly, though none present believed that she herself would have foregone the opportunity which her more favorable seat had afforded her. “Ah! what, a sight was that,” she went on, the fascinated eyes of the other women and the terrified gaze of the child riveted on her face. “To see that long, gaunt youth rise up suddenly in the midst of the solemnest part of the sermon, wave his arms in a wild, grotesque manner, and fling himself with unseemly violence from that reverend roof! ”
“Ah, but wot you not the cause of his strange action?” Dame Sparrow interposed eagerly, grudging the beadle’s wife the bema of the town pump. “It was just after the Rev. Mr. Lee had declared that the sins of the dead woman (so he called her) were as scarlet, that Matthew Ballantyne took himself hence in dudgeon.”
“ But, Goody, Mr. Lee said in the eye of the All-Righteous,” corrected a gentler, sweeter voice than had fallen before upon the harsh air of that morning. And the face of a young matron who had been one of Alice’s chosen friends flushed slightly, and the hand that tenderly stroked the flaxen hair of her girl-baby trembled. “And if Alice’s sins were such — to One that sees all — what must ours be ? ” she asked timidly, hoping, perchance, to turn the current of talk into more healthful channels.
Then, indeed, they paused suddenly, — this group of chattering dames, though not arrested by the gentle reproof of the youngest amongst them. It was to bend beetle brows and righteously inquisitorial glances upon Matthew Ballantyne himself, as he passed through the marketplace to the solitary, one-roomed cottage he occupied upon the shingly shore.
Ah! he had been in the forest all night! How haggard he looked and wild, — not with the deep passion of sorrow, the beadle’s wife averred, but more like one who consorts with evil spirits. His long cloak was clutched so closely about him that one scarce had a peep of its brave lining, but his scarlet scarf fluttered debonairly to the breeze. Furthermore, Dame Sparrow, who stood on the farthest verge of the circle about the pump, declared that he crushed in his hand something of that same sinister hue.
Matthew Ballantyne passed from view, unaware, it is like, of the unfriendly eyes that followed his retreating figure, though these were many. For out of all that group, two members alone did not frown upon the melancholy stranger, — the gentle young matron stood with her eyes fixed on the ground, but the child she held so tenderly clapped her tiny hands for joy of the scarlet ribband, and her little face was alight with a winning smile.
A week later a festal day found this same little company, enlarged by the addition of half a score or more others, gathered in the market-place, ready and eager to discuss thoroughly the topic that had been merely introduced on the day when their conversation about the town pump had been unseasonably interrupted by the appearance of the minister. Not, indeed, that the idea was strange to any one; it came out that there was but one woman in the group who had not long before this noted and meditated in secret upon Matthew Ballantyne’s predilection for the color scarlet. Who, pray, had not remarked that, plant in the seaward window of his cottage, that bore those strange scarlet blossoms, — not a geranium, although the careless observer might mistake it for one at a distance.
Aye, and the posies that he was wont to fetch Alice Lee from the deep forest,” chimed in the minister’s next-door neighbor. “None but he ever found such blossoms, blood-red, and paganish-looking. And though Alice Lee would not, or dared not, wear them in the bosom of her white gown, I promise you that up to the day she died there was always one or more of them in a glass in her chamber window. And mark ye, gossips, there was none who ever got a nearer view of them than from below stairs.”
Whereupon Mistress Hampden — she whose pew was under the very pulpit — made bold to speak.
“Sisters,” quoth she, in so low a voice that the circle instinctively contracted, with its circumference close about its centre, “let me tell you now what I dared not a week ago, lest you laugh my words to scorn, or report me to the magistrates. Ye noted, I trow, how moved I was when young Master Ballantyne’s strange action was spoken of. Hear this, then: even as he left the meeting-house, with my own eyes I saw the white blossom in Alice Lee’s dead hand change on a sudden to burning scarlet.”
A deep, awestruck silence followed this communication, broken presently by a stifled cry of horror, which little Nehemiah Carey could no longer suppress.
The correction instituted immediately by his stern, heavy-handed mother both caused her son to forget the occasion of his fright, and so far slackened the tensity of the strain upon the others that they could quite relieve it by discussion.
They spoke of Matthew Ballantyne’s portraits, which, in truth, were of an excellence so signal that his foibles were tolerated beyond ordinary probation. It was discovered now that he had not, during his whole stay in the place, painted a portrait without at least a touch of scarlet. Many of his sitters, worthy magistrates, men of high standing and solid worth,— nay, his Excellency the Governor himself, — who had yielded to the laudable desire to leave their stern faces to influence the lives of their posterity had subtly been led to wear some garment or ornament of that hue. Others, who sat in unrelieved sad-colored garb, appeared in the portrait marked in some manner by that pagan, papistical shade.
Finally — not on that day, probably, though just when it is hard to make out — the minister’s weighty authority was adduced as further evidence of the youth’s demoniacal obsession, — of his utter depravity likewise. More than a twelvemonth earlier, it was learned, before Alice’s father had any suspicion of the young man’s aspirations to his daughter’s hand, Ballantyne had fallen into conversation with the Rev. Mr. Lee, anent what the minister had at first believed spiritual matters. Instead of being reverend Biblical inquiry on the part of the young man, however, it proved the merest scoffing, if, indeed, not worse. Before he had done, Ballantyne made bold to criticise the passage of Scripture referring to sin being “as scarlet.” He declared his opinion to be that scarlet was rather indicative of fullness of life, and thereby perfection, and that drab or black should be substituted in its place; and then, before the astonished and dismayed clergyman had breath to rebuke him, he veered about, and began to prate, with soft, shy eloquence, of the passage that speaks of the virtuous woman who clothes her household in scarlet. What wonder that, thereafter, even had the father been willing to entrust his one beautiful, cherished daughter to a foreign stranger, the preacher of the Divine Word would not suffer a child of his flock to be beguiled by one who searched the Scriptures but to carp and to blaspheme!
But no more of this now. Would that we had been in the forest yesterday-week with Matthew Ballantyne himself, reverent witness of his youthful, solitary grief. Would that we might have turned from that flock of chattering dames, and followed the young painter to his solitary cottage on the shore. Would even that, these desires being impossible of satisfaction, we might have Ballantyne’s own word, his record of what passed with him from that hour until the day of his early death. Unhappily, this, too, is impossible. The tale is made up wholly from the records of those who misunderstood and hated the youth. The case of the opposition alone is given; the defense is silent, the only rag of evidence for that side being in the character of the portraits Ballantyne painted, and, in particular, in that of his own.
Of the former, mention will be made later. The latter portrait, faded unduly by damp and neglect, and preserved at all only by chance, presents the halflength likeness of a figure of a wild gypsy grace. About the shoulders is flung a fantastic dark-hued cloak with a scarlet lining, — richer of material and hue, we may guess, than that which went so frequently to the damp forest; while the clear, childlike brow is shadowed by a broa d-brimmed, steeple-crowned hat, sadcolored, but bearing an anomalous scarlet plume, from which, since it is never in any way mentioned by the youth’s contemporaries, we may make what inference we will. The face, — peering out of a mass of yellow elf-locks, — the face is of one whose life is an eager, unwearied, neversatisfied quest of something that is not anywhere to be discovered. The cheekbones are high, the hollow white cheeks have each its spot of hectic color; the nostrils are singularly sensitive, — as of one who breathes fire. In the blue-black eyes there lurks, indeed, a certain wildness, which still does not conceal nor mar the intrinsic sweetness therein; and this, with the mildness of the brow, and the almost womanly gentleness of the large, thin-lipped mouth, might, we think, have caused a less rigid people to pity rather than to distrust the young stranger in their midst.
After that festal-day discussion in the market-place, curious eyes were ever on the alert for more significant vagaries upon the part of Matthew Ballantyne, curious minds, — almost pitifully destitute of other matter for conjecture, — ever eager to weave that singular thread of scarlet into stranger and more startling warps. The young painter did not want for sitters; though, as the days passed, he devoted less and still less time to his art. until finally, but for their importunity, he would have spent his whole time in the forest.
Now they began to pry his haunts, — fearfully at first, for they were not wont to penetrate so far into the forest; but more dauntlessly as curiosity deepened; and the informant was temporarily chief among his townsmen. And by little and little, an account of Matthew Ballantyne’s day’s commerce was fashioned; whether from observation or inductive fancy we know not, though we may infer both methods to have been employed.
Deep in the woods, — deeper than white man had thitherto penetrated, — marked by a great, lightning-riven oak which had been a sturdy sapling when Christopher Columbus first approached the Spanish main, lay a small hollow, like an inverted shield, encircled closely by the fair, smooth, marble-white columns of slender plane trees, whose arching branches formed a sort of hypæthral roof. The planes would seem to indicate that the dell was earlier the basin of a pool, as likewise the marvelous fineness and abundance of the greenest of moss that carpeted it. In truth, it must have been a real woodland bower, and might have been alluring, even to Matthew Ballantyne ’s grave and serious townspeople, had there not been another, and, if not greater, at least more certain danger thereabout even than that of the savages. For without the encircling trees, henbane and deadly nightshade were thickly strown; and glossy, dark, and wantonly luxurious, over and through the moss, festooned about the tree trunks and the few large stones scattered about, rioted the three-leaved poison ivy. And whether the evil spirit in league with Matthew Ballantyne was in truth author of this malign growth, or whether the painter took advantage of the nature of the place, in any event it kept the wary inquisitive from venturing so near as to ascertain themselves fully of the character of the mound at the roots of the oak, — the shrine of that hypæthral temple, whose priest the wild young stranger was.
A small mound, yet large enough, it was averred, for a maiden’s grave, it was all abloom with flowers, — scarlet flowers, which were said to glow through the darkness at night with baleful brilliance. At last, then, Alice Lee had her “store of blossoms,” for none doubted that it was her grave; but alas! in such unholy manner that none of her friends — and all her townspeople, it will be remembered, were that — could feel it aught but sacrilege. Still, none made his protest action, not even the bereaved father. Nevertheless, we must believe that, though the Rev. Thomas Lee shared, seemingly, the acquiescence of the less concerned, he did not partake of their motive. Either he believed that the same magic that alone could have transported Alice’s body to that lonely spot could at any time restore it, or the simulacrum, to the churchyard; or, despite the rhetorical doubts which had so incensed Alice’s lover, the father might have really felt so confident of his daughter’s soul’s abiding in Paradise, that he had no fear though her cast earthly garment were at the mercy even of the angel of the bottomless pit.
Days elapsed, and weeks, and still the artist’s cottage by the shore was deserted by day, and frequently by night. The village had little sight of the youth. Now one, up betimes, perchance had a glance of his lean, lithe figure crossing the market-place. Again, another, looking forth from his window at dead of night, would see the same unmistakable form quietly, though not furtively, seeking its lonely abode; and those who had the latter experience went so far as to say that one knew him in the blackest night because of some scarlet token, — a flower, perchance, from the grave in the forest,— that burned luridly through any enveloping medium.
Ballantyne had been officially ordered to leave the colony within the twelvemonth; a curious bit of latitude, which, since it could not have arisen from the scarcity or fortuity of vessels sailing overseas, should we go far astray in attributing to some selfish desire on the part of the people? In any event, this is clear: from the day on which this sentence was announced to him until that of his last return from the forest, Matthew Ballantyne scarce appeared in the village by day but that he was besieged by a throng of would-be sitters.
He painted a number of portraits, apparently not so much because he desired to do the work, or had any concern for the bootless gold that was supposed to compensate his loss of time, but because, we may think, despite his wild ways, he was too gentle of heart to withstand importunity.
Though he worked better than ever before, the young painter afforded less satisfaction. For that subtle art of depicting character more vividly than feature, which we find first in his portrait of himself, appears in each subsequent work of his brush, and more frequently, it must be acknowledged, to the discredit or the chagrin of the subject than otherwise. The more part of these pictures has disappeared, yet, though those extant are faded and cracked, one understands why the Puritans were disappointed in them, and why, none the less, they persisted in beseeching to be limned. Strong, stern, handsome features are belied by the stamp of inner weakness or hypocrisy: a blandly smiling countenance leers, let one stand at a certain distance, with bitter hatred; a woman’s face, unwontedly soft of line, and virtuously proud, confesses uncharitableness that lacks little of being mere cruelty. The minister himself, — for, strange to relate, the Rev. Thomas Lee sat for his portrait to his dead daughter’s lover, — though in the features which others describe as afire with righteous zeal and fervency, eyes glowing with visions of Paradise, lips lighted at the fires of Zion, Matthew Ballantyne depicted naught indeed of conscious evil or hypocrisy,— confronts the observer like an image of stone. Unmerciful, unloving, — unhuman, that is to say, — this Puritan divine, father of sweet Alice Lee, lives, if not to the mockery, at least to the unconcern, of a distant generation.
Did Matthew Ballantyne find, then, no good at all in this world, in mankind, now that for him its fairest blossom was blighted ? Ah, yes, he was still too gentle to be wholly misanthrope. The maidens of the village, and one young matron — all Alice’s former friends — are an exception to the general character of his work. Gentleness, modesty, love, — in varying degrees we find these qualities graven in each sweetly, and, through his art, eternally, youthful face that he copied from those pure, maidenly hearts. And we may accept them as proof that, even though the young painter were in league with an evil spirit or the evil spirit himself, who endowed him with unerring insight, he was not wholly given over to the powers of darkness, and read and imaged the good more willingly than the ill.
We have purposely delayed discussion of this spirit of darkness until now, for, though the records state that its existence was known immediately after the little grave in the woods was discovered, all internal evidence is to the contrary. We cannot believe that the matter was mooted at all until after Matthew Ballantyne had asked the question which is given below. However that may be, we reproduce the description as given by those curious observers to whom we are indebted for much of the material of this tale.
Suspecting unholy commerce, at length watchers were rewarded by the sight of a strange, unearthly creature in the high branches of the storm-blanched oak. A small creature, its fearful aspect depended not alone upon a sharp, grinning, halfhuman face, a smooth, round, hairless head pointed with horns, claw feet, and wide-spreading, skinny-looking wings that seemed designed, not to soar into the empyrean, but to drop to the bottomless pit, — add to all this, that, from horned head to claw foot, it was all of a brilliant, malign scarlet. This being, luridly visible day and night, whether an emissary of hell, or the devil himself, consorted with Matthew Ballantyne present, and guarded the grave from the tree above during his absence.
Menace as it was to the community, it is acknowledged that the matter was not brought to the ears of the magistrates until the end was already at hand, — also that, though more than one was ready with glib account after the matter was once launched in the gossip-stirred waters of public discussion, Matthew Ballantyne himself set the bark afloat. Returning to his cottage one misty twilight, he encountered on the beach the portly person of a visiting clergyman who was famed throughout the colony for his attainments as a scholar. And, though divine lore was his chosen and favorite field, there was scarce a secular byway of science into which he had not wandered.
Ballantyne remembered the kindly face it was now too dark to discern. Halting, he bowed lowly and reverently before the old man.
“A good-evening to you, sir, in whom I think to meet the painter who so skillfully limned the portrait of my granddaughter, Mistress Dorcas Elliot,” returned the old man graciously. “Will you walk with me along the sounding shore ? ”
The young man acquiesced in silence. As they fell into step, the elder noted that his companion wanted not only the springing gait that should have belonged to his youth, but even the slight strength of his own old age. He laid his hand gently on the painter’s shoulder, and would have chided him kindly for overworking.
But the youth suddenly raised his head high, and his burning eyes penetrated the gloom with a fire that seemed no grosser than that of the stars gathering above their heads.
“Tell me,” he cried, “reverend sir, you who know all things, ’t is said, and that without losing hold on the greatest good, charity, — answer me one question. Is there in all this world, — hast thou ever seen aught ” —
“Fear not to disburthen thy mind,” said the other mildly; “distress not thy self with doubt.”
Still Matthew Ballantyne paused. But again, encouraged by the good old man, he spoke out.
“Tell me, then, — is there, in all God’s created universe, such a creature as a scarlet bat ? ”
The remainder of the interview is unhappily lost. We may guess, however, that, if the old minister felt constrained solemnly to warn the misguided youth, he acted the part in the gentle, fatherly way that was his one manner. Returning to the manse where he was a guest, he laid the matter solicitously before the Rev. Thomas Lee. The latter, in his turn, directly after the departure of his guest, brought the affair before the minds of the magistrates in, perchance, a less sympathetic manner. The following day the town buzzed with the tale of Matthew Ballantyne and the scarlet bat. The excitement continued unceasingly, while for three days the villagers awaited the return of the mysterious painter from the forest.
On the fourth day, his floating cloak was descried from afar by a group gathered in the market-place, —for what purpose we are not informed. A crowd collected with mysterious alacrity to watch his approach. The long, swinging gait of six months earlier was become a spiritless, perchance painful, toiling; but the youth’s straight form was not bent, nor his fever-bright eyes downcast. Mention is made of the fact that he flaunted as boldly as ever the brave lining of his cloak, and that his thin cheeks were hectically marked with the baleful hue; yet naught is directly said of the expression of Matthew Ballantyne’s face upon this his last appearance among his fellowmen. Nothing is said, yet much may be inferred. We know, though the village urchins hooted and gibed at first, that on his approach they ceased suddenly, while all the people fell back, making broad way for him; and even the magistrates, who were to have challenged the offender, and in good probability to have seized upon him, stood motionless and tonguetied as he passed. Nay, more, the spectators were speechless with apprehension and terror to see a little maid, the child of the young matron alluded to, slip from her mother’s restraining grasp, and, running unabashed to Matthew Ballantyne’s side, seize his hand in both her little ones, and touch it lovingly and reverently with her baby lips.
He smiled upon the little maid, and, looking upon his portrait, one fancies that the child must have borne that smile in memory all her life. Then he passed silently on, disappearing in the thicket that led to his cottage on the shore.
Thenceforth he did not emerge from his dwelling. Watch was set upon the place by order of the magistrates, who had so strangely forgotten their duty, but who now determined to apprehend him so soon as he should stir forth from a roof believed to shelter unholy secrets.
Again they waited three days, days of more feverish excitement, for it was reported that each night, as darkness fell, a fiery, winged creature circled helixwise about the cottage chimney, before dropping down through it. The watch was kept from the windows of the house which stood highest in town; none ventured even to the shore, — with a single exception. The gentle young matron who had been Alice Lee’s friend, even while she shuddered at thought of the scarlet bat, and could not but have fear for her little maid, still felt some womanly pity for the strange youth, and went twice, alone and stealthily, tremblingly to place food and a bottle of wine upon his window-sill.
Finally, the popular excitement becoming dangerously tense, the magistrates felt forced to take decisive action. Accordingly, upon the Friday night of that week, ten prominent men, including the minister, surrounded the cottage on the shore. Before entering, they made the three windows fast from the outside, and sent a nimble lad, who feared his errand, perchance, quite as much as the threatened rod, up to the roof-tree to secure the top of the chimney by means of a contrivance prepared for the purpose.
They marched in very quietly, the ten men, yet so profound was the silence within that their footfalls seemed the iron tramp of a mighty host. The minister pushed open the inner door, and with beating hearts the others followed him across the threshold. There they halted suddenly, and, forgetful of all, each bared his head.
One thing alone they saw, in all the fantastic litter of the little room. Matthew Ballantyne lay upon a couch drawn close to the shoreward-looking window, his face just turned to the water and the stars. He was dad in a rich robe of brilliant scarlet stuff, — doubtless a part of that paraphernalia all artists have,— and his cloak, flung gracefully back from the shoulders, draped itself picturesquely about it. Over the scarlet cushion, his hair, silky and beautiful as a woman’s, spread softly from his face, — his white, white face, upon which only two tiny spots of that hectic color lingered.
They had not disturbed his sleep, though he lay so near the window. Matthew Ballantyne was without their jurisdiction. He was gone overseas in very truth, and his face said that the going was not exile, but freedom. And mild as that brow was, and sweet as the expression, and ineffably peaceful, — remote from them and theirs as utterly as only the look of the dead may be,— nevertheless it rebuked those ten men sternly, humbling them until they could not look into one another’s faces. And as they dispersed, not concertedly, but slinking away one by one, regret and remorse, albeit but half conceived, went along with each. It was not that their case was gone up to an higher tribunal; it was the apprehension that the Superior Judge might think they had bungled.
And the scarlet bat ? We cannot say. Later writers agree only in the grotesque and fanciful character of their several accounts, and the last contemporary narrator pauses at that death-bed scene. We can only echo, with more warmth, if it may be, the valediction of the latter. “God send,” he adds, “that in the article of death young Master Ballantyne was released of the Devil and at peace with his Maker; for, in good sooth, he painted passing well.”