"On receiving this reply, a stern, sullen, iron spirit entered into my bosom. I betrayed no external mark of passion; I sat down in silence; I placed the letter and Gertrude's picture before me. There, still and motionless, I remained for hours. I remember well I was awakened from my gloomy revery by the clock, as it struck the first hour of the morning. At that lone and ominous sound, the associations of romance and dread which the fables of our childhood connect with it rushed coldly and fearfully into my mind: the damp dews broke out upon my forehead and the blood curdled in my limbs. In that moment I knelt down and vowed a frantic and deadly oath—the words of which I would not now dare to repeat—that before three days expired, hell should no longer be cheated of its prey. I rose,—I flung myself on my bed, and slept.
"The next day I left my abode. I purchased a strong and swift horse; and, disguising myself from head to foot in a long horseman's cloak, I set off alone, locking in my heart the calm and cold conviction that my oath should be kept. I placed, concealed in my dress, two pistols; my intention was to follow Tyrrell wherever he went, till we could find ourselves alone, and without the chance of intrusion. It was then my determination to force him into a contest, and that no trembling of the hand, no error of the swimming sight, might betray my purpose, to place us foot to foot, and the mouth of each pistol almost to the very temple of each antagonist. Nor was I deterred for a moment from this resolution by the knowledge that my own death must be as certain as my victim's. On the contrary, I looked forward to dying thus, and so baffling the more lingering, but not less sure, disease which was daily wasting me away, with the same fierce, yet not unquiet delight with which men have rushed into battle, and sought out a death less bitter to them than life.
"For two days, though I each day saw Tyrrell, fate threw into my way no opportunity of executing my design. The morning of the third came,— Tyrrell was on the race-ground; sure that he would remain there for some hours, I put up my wearied horse in the town, and, seating myself in an obscure corner of the course, was contented with watching, as the serpent does his victim, the distant motions of my enemy. Perhaps you can recollect passing a man seated on the ground and robed in a horseman's cloak. I need not tell you that it was I whom you passed and accosted. I saw you ride by me; but the moment you were gone I forgot the occurrence. I looked upon the rolling and distant crowd as a child views the figures of the phantasmagoria, scarcely knowing if my eyes deceived me, feeling impressed with some stupefying and ghastly sensation of dread, and cherishing the conviction that my life was not as the life of the creatures that passed before me.
"The day waned: I went back for my horse; I returned to the course, and, keeping at a distance as little suspicious as possible, followed the motions of Tyrrell. He went back to the town, rested there, repaired to a gaming-table, stayed in it a short time, returned to his inn, and ordered his horse.
"In all these motions I followed the object of my pursuit; and my heart bounded with joy when I at last saw him set out alone and in the advancing twilight. I followed him till he left the main road. Now, I thought, was my time. I redoubled my pace, and had nearly reached him, when some horsemen appearing, constrained me again to slacken my pace. Various other similar interruptions occurred to delay my plot. At length all was undisturbed. I spurred my horse, and was nearly on the heels of my enemy, when I perceived him join another man: this was you; I clenched my teeth and drew my breath, as I once more retreated to a distance. In a short time two men passed me, and I found that, owing to some accident on the road, they stopped to assist you. It appears, by your evidence on a subsequent event, that these men were Thornton and his friend Dawson; at the time they passed too rapidly, and I was too much occupied in my own dark thoughts, to observe them: still I kept up to you and Tyrrell, sometimes catching the outlines of your figures through the moon, light, at others (with the acute sense of anxiety), only just distinguishing the clang of your horses' hoofs on the stony ground. At last a heavy shower came on: imagine my joy when Tyrrell left you and rode off alone!
"I passed you, and followed my enemy as fast as my horse would permit; but it was not equal to Tyrrell's, which was almost at its full speed. However, I came, at last, to a very steep and almost precipitous descent. I was forced to ride slowly and cautiously; this, however, I the less regarded, from my conviction that Tyrrell must be obliged to use the same precaution. My hand was on my pistol with a grasp of premeditated revenge, when a shrill, sharp, solitary cry broke on my ear.
"No sound followed: all was silence. I was just approaching towards the close of the descent, when a horse without its rider passed me. The shower had ceased, and the moon broke from the cloud some minutes before; by its light I recognized the horse rode by Tyrrell; perhaps, I thought, it has thrown its master, and my victim will now be utterly in my power. I pushed hastily forward in spite of the hill, not yet wholly passed. I came to a spot of singular desolation: it was a broad patch of waste land, a pool of water was on the right, and a remarkable and withered tree hung over it. I looked round, but saw nothing of life stirring. A dark and imperfectly developed object lay by the side of the pond; I pressed forward: merciful God! my enemy had escaped my hand, and lay in the stillness of death before me!"
"What!" I exclaimed, interrupting Glanville, for I could contain myself no longer, "it was not by you then that Tyrrell fell?" With these words, I grasped his hand; and, excited as I had been by my painful and wrought-up interest in his recital, I burst into tears of gratitude and joy. Reginald Glanville was innocent: Ellen was not the sister of an assassin!
After a short pause, Glanville continued:
"I gazed upon the upward and distorted face, in a deep and sickening silence; an awe, dark and undefined, crept over my heart: I stood beneath the solemn and sacred heavens, and felt that the hand of God was upon me; that a mysterious and fearful edict had gone forth; that my headlong and unholy wrath had, in the very midst of its fury, been checked, as if but the idle anger of a child; that the plan I had laid in the foolish wisdom of my heart had been traced, step by step, by an all-seeing eye, and baffled in the moment of its fancied success by an inscrutable and awful doom. I had wished the death of my enemy: lo! my wish was accomplished, —how, I neither knew nor guessed; there, a still and senseless clod of earth, without power of offence or injury, he lay beneath my feet: it seemed as if, in the moment of my uplifted arm, the Divine Avenger had asserted His prerogative,—as if the angel which had smitten the Assyrian had again swept forth, though against a meaner victim; and while he punished the guilt of a human criminal, had set an eternal barrier to the vengeance of a human foe!