"And who was that soldier?" asked Victoria with heightening intensity. "How did he know of the crime?"
"I know not—he vanished across the forest the instant that he gave me the sinister information. That soldier got back to town before me—he was the same man who tore your grandchild from your arms and killed it at your feet—"
"Schanvoch," resumed Victoria with a shudder and carrying both her hands to her forehead, "my son is dead—I shall neither accuse nor excuse him—but a horrible mystery underlies this crime—"
"Listen," I replied, as several circumstances that had slipped my memory at the first pangs of my grief now came back to my mind. "When I arrived before the door of my house, I knocked; only the distant sound of Sampso's cries answered me. A moment later the lower window of my wife's room was opened. I ran thither. The shutters were being pushed aside to give passage to a man, while Ellen cried for help. I pushed the man back into the room, which was dark as a tomb—in the darkness I struck and killed your son. Almost immediately after I felt two arms thrown around my neck—I imagined myself attacked by a new assailant—I made another thrust in the dark—it was Ellen, my beloved wife, whom I killed—"
And my sobs choked me.
"Brother—brother," said Victoria to me, "this has been a fatal night to us all—"
"Listen further—above all to this," I said to my foster-sister, controlling my emotion: "At the very moment when I recognized the voice of my expiring wife, I saw by the light of the moon a woman perched on the casement of the window—"
"It is she probably whose voice deceived me," observed Sampso, "by announcing to me a message from Victoria."
"I think so too," I replied; "and that woman, doubtlessly the accomplice of Victorin's crime, called to him, saying it was time to flee, and that she now was his, seeing he had kept the promise that he made to her."