Another moment passed, and the crowd came rushing from the rocky steeps, filling the air with fierce shouts, and wild yells of execration, while the men-at-arms, circled round the bleeding trunk, gazing upon the wild and unearthly countenance of the Scholar, in wonder and in awe, each man whispering to his comrade, a word of fear, as he marked the expression of blasphemous and fiend-like scorn, stamped upon the visage of the FRATRICIDE.
And while they circled round, struck dumb with a nameless awe, two Figures, arrayed in robes of sable, rushed through the throng and confronted Robin the Rough, as he stood stern, silent and awe-stricken, they gazed upon the Dead.
“It is—” exclaimed the solemn voice of Adrian Di Albarone—“It is the judgment of Heaven!”
From rock, from hill, from valley, from forest and from castle-wall, arose the stern echo,—
“The Judgment of Heaven—the Judgment of Heaven!”
On, on, like lightning, darted the ebon steeds, bearing the torn and shattered limbs, reeking with the life blood, yet warm and smoking. On, on as tho’ the spirit of the lost, had entered their maddened forms. On, on, they flew!
Onward! and onward! sped the wild horses, tracking their course with blood, and rushing past the cottages of the affrighted peasantry, like beings of the unreal world, fired with the soul of Arimanes, cursed with the Spirit of the Evil One! Onward and Onward!
One brave barb, came plunging from the depths of a wood, and a precipice mighty and steep, was before him, but he heeded it not. Down an hundred fathoms into the boiling water he fell.
Another black steed sank into the calm waters of a placid river; another reached the sea, and plunging in its depths, swam far, far, into the wide expanse of the waters and was heard of no more.
The last—swept like the wind, by hamlet and tower and town. The live-long day he urged on his career. The blood streaming from his nostrils, his limbs weakened, and his sinews unstrung, he entered the confines of a long valley, where a calm lake, gave its bosom to the evening sun.