Jake Hamersley was selected to give the death shot, “taking” the brute between the eyes. She fell with a thud, and with a few convulsive kicks, expired on the snow. Major Stewardson built a military campfire while Hamersley and Vallon carefully skinned the carcass, and fed the flesh to the dogs. The Nimrods offered the hide to the young Major as a trophy, but he declined with thanks. He could not bear to have such a remembrance of a creature that had disported itself so recently on his loved one’s little four poster bed. Perhaps it had partaken of her spirit, from absorbing the environment where she had pined away to death.
He only wanted to visit her grave, above the meeting of the waters, to drop there a few tears, a part of the boundless water of life. His heart would always be a Haunted House.
It was verging on the “witching hour,” and an ugly winter drizzle had begun to fall, as the triumphant hunters ascended the soggy bank, and stood before the portals of Castlecloyd, undecided as to whether they should bivouac there until morning. Major Stewardson was muttering to himself the concluding lines of that Ode of Horace,
“Not thus forever can I lie and quake,
Nor thus remain,
Before thy threshold for thy love’s sweet sake,
Soaked by the rain.”
