Stung beyond control of reason, Gerald sprang to his feet; but before he could even approach Kelly, the stout friar had grasped his short blunderbuss and cocked it.
‘Another step—one step more, and if you were the anointed King himself, instead of his bastard, I ‘ll send you to your reckoning!’
With a spring like the bound of a tiger, Gerald dashed at him; but the Fra was prepared, and, raising the weapon to his side, he fired. A wild, mad cry, blended with the loud report echoed in many a mountain gorge, and the youth fell dead on the sward.
Marietta threw herself down upon the corpse, kissing the lifeless lips, and clasping her arms around the motionless body. With every endearing word she tried to call him back to life, even for a momentary consciousness of her devotion. The love she had so long denied him, she now offered; she would be his and his only. With the wild eloquence of a mind on fire, she pictured forth a future, now brightened with all that successful ambition could confer, now blessed with the tranquil joys of some secluded existence. Alas! he was beyond the reach of either fortune. The last of the Stuarts lay still and stark on the cold earth, his blue eyes staring without a blink at the strong sun.
When some peasants passed on the following day they found Marietta seated beside the dead body, the cold hand clasped within both her own, and her eyes riveted upon the features; her mind was gone, and, save a few broken, indistinct mutterings, she never spoke again.
As for Kelly, none ever could trace him. Some allege that he dashed over the precipice and was killed; others aver that he sailed that same night from St. Stephano for America, where he was afterwards seen and recognised by many.
The little cypress tree in the mountains which once marked the grave of the last of the Stuarts has long since withered.
THE END [ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]