The window was opened, evidently by force; an instrument like a wedge was fixed in the bureau containing Lester’s money, and seemed to have been left there, as if the person using it had been disturbed before the design for which it was introduced had been accomplished, and, (the only evidence of life,) Aram stood, dressed, in the centre of the room, a pistol in his left hand, a sword in his right; a bludgeon severed in two lay at his feet, and on the floor within two yards of him, towards the window, drops of blood yet warm, showed that the pistol had not been discharged in vain.
“And is it you, my brave friend, that I have to thank for our safety?” cried Lester in great emotion.
“You, Eugene!” repeated Madeline, sinking on his breast.
“But thanks hereafter,” continued Lester; “let us now to the pursuit,—perhaps the villain may have perished beneath your bullet?”
“Ha!” muttered Aram, who had hitherto seemed unconscious of all around him; so fixed had been his eye, so colourless his cheek, so motionless his posture. “Ha! say you so?—think you I have slain him?—no, it cannot be—the ball did not slay, I saw him stagger; but he rallied—not so one who receives a mortal wound!—ha! ha!—there is blood, you say, that is true; but what then!—it is not the first wound that kills, you must strike again—pooh, pooh, what is a little blood!”
While he was thus muttering, Lester and the more active of the servants had already sallied through the window, but the night was so intensely dark that they could not penetrate a step beyond them. Lester returned, therefore, in a few moments; and met Aram’s dark eye fixed upon him with an unutterable expression of anxiety.
“You have found no one,” said he, “no dying man?—Ha!—well—well—well! they must both have escaped; the night must favour them.”
“Do you fancy the villain was severely wounded?”
“Not so—I trust not so; he seemed able to—But stop—oh God!—stop!—your foot is dabbling in blood—blood shed by me,—off! off!”
Lester moved aside with a quick abhorrence, as he saw that his feet were indeed smearing the blood over the polished and slippery surface of the oak boards, and in moving he stumbled against a dark lantern in which the light still burnt, and which the robbers in their flight had left.