"Wild was the place, but wilder his despair:
Low shaggy rocks that o'er deep caverns scowl
Echo his groans: the tigress in her lair
Starts at the sound, and answers with a growl."
Zóphiël.
"Hurl'd
From the topmost height of his ambition,
It became his ambition to mate him
With the lowest."
The night was fast approaching as the desolate outcast entered the forest. He hailed the gathering darkness with joy, for it was in unison with the gloom of his soul. The howl of the wildest storm would have been music to his ears! He could have mocked with shouts of gladness the rattling thunder, and played with the shafts of the glittering lightning.
He rode deep into the wood—whither he cared not so that he left behind him all that he had lost. For half an hour he thought of nothing but urging his horse forward at the top of his speed. He banished thought, reflection, sensation. He dared not think. He found relief only in animal action and rapid motion, and rode furiously onward without knowing or regarding the course taken by his horse, who instinctively followed the dark windings of the forest paths.
At length the moon rose and shone down upon him through the tree tops. Its light seemed to restore him to himself. He checked his rapid course, and gazed at her pale orb; as he looked, reflection returned, and he began to realise his situation, and to taste the full bitterness of the cup of which he had drunken. The past, the present, the future, flashed with all their naked colours upon his mind. The picture his imagination painted with the hues they lent was too appalling to contemplate; and, as if the fabled influence of the planet, the soft light of which had restored him to reflection, had acted upon his fevered brain, he was suddenly converted into a maniac. He rose upright in his stirrups, and shouted, shrieked, till the forests rang again. He shook his clinched fists at the placid moon, that seemed smilingly to mock his woes. He spurred on his horse till the animal groaned with pain, and plunged madly forward with his phrensied rider! He would then rein him up, and, gnashing his teeth, lift his hands above his head, and curse God and man. Then he would again shout with phrensy, and gore his steed till he became furious and snorted with rage, and ride once more forward with the speed of the wind.
These passions were too violent to last. His wild excitement gradually subsided; his horse was suffered to move at his own pace; and, with his arms folded moodily, and his chin drooping on his breast, he gave himself up to the stern and gloomy thoughts of his situation, and, for a time, buried in the depths of his own meditations, seemed to be wholly unconscious of external objects. He rode on in this way for more than an hour, when he was aroused by the sudden stopping of his horse. He looked up and saw before him a dilapidated gate, which barred his farther progress. Beyond, visible by the full flood of moonlight, was a lonely square tower, flanked by a single wing, topped with a battlement. He listened, and thought he heard the dashing of waves upon the beach. The whole scene was new to him! Where could his faithful steed have borne him? From the moment he had left Castle More behind all had seemed like a blank to him. How far, and whither, could he have ridden? He looked up at the moon. It had not risen when he left Castle More, yet it now rode high in the heavens! By her position it was near midnight.
Indifferent where he wandered, he leaped the sunken gate, and rode up to the tower. It was not in ruins, yet wore an aspect of desolation and neglect. Its loneliness harmonized with his own situation, and was grateful to him. He rode round the angle of a buttress, when the sea suddenly opened before him, and he saw that the tower stood on a rock thirty or forty feet above it, and that where it overhung the water projected a small balcony. A sudden thought flashed upon his mind as he discovered this.
"It must be!" he exclaimed, with animation; "'tis the tower of Hurtel of the Red-Hand! This moat, yonder ruined drawbridge, its situation, and, above all, that balcony, one and all, identify it with Elpsy's description. By the bones of my red-handed sire! thou knewest what thou wert about to bring me hither, sagacious animal!" he added, sarcastically, patting the noble horse on the neck; "'tis fitting I should take possession of my father's towers with the inheritance of his name. Ha, ha! I am not quite a vagabond!" and he laughed scornfully.
He started with surprise, for the laugh seemed to be echoed from the tower.