"And this would have been my situation!" thought Ernestine, with a heart full of horror.
Stooping down, she deliberately, but not without a shudder, drew from his belt four pistols and threw away the priming, and took possession of his poniard, which she placed in her girdle—uttering a joyful laugh, for she knew that her moment for triumph had come. If Bandolo's eyes could have slain, at that crisis their glare would have immolated her. She was about to rush from the cottage when another thought occurred to her; and grasping the heavy portmanteau, which contained all Bandolo's vast amount of treasury bills and gold—that gold which the perpetration of a hundred complicated crimes had amassed and enabled him to hoard up, like the very blood of his heart—she shook it tauntingly before his fixed and frenzied eyes, and, rejoicing that she could thus rob the robber, issued from the cottage with the intention of throwing the ponderous mail into the first deep well she came to, that the price of blood might be lost to men for ever.
As she disappeared, a cry almost left the paralysed tongue of Bandolo, on seeing all the fruit of his crimes and avarice vanishing into smoke, together with the prophecy of the gitana and his hopes of a count's coronet; and as he sank lower and lower upon the clay floor, and the power of a narcotic that was to last for six-and-thirty hours spread over him, the tramp of a horse's hoofs receding into the distant paths of the wood, were the last sounds he heard; and they informed him, that his beautiful prisoner and his beloved gold were gone together.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE NUNS OF ST. KNUD.
Notwithstanding the wildness of her terror, Ernestine, who was a bold and expert horse woman, retained sufficient presence of mind to select her own nag, to give a glance at the saddle, and before mounting to throw the mail with all its contents into the deep tarn that lay before the cottage-door. Relieved of this encumbrance, and feeling that she had revenged herself, she dashed at full speed along the same path by which they had come; and though she frequently paused to listen, and cry aloud the name of her sister, in the hope that she might be in her vicinity, the echoes alone replied.
A torrent of tears again came to her relief; her hat flew off, and with all her loosened hair streaming behind her, in such a manner that it frequently became twisted among the branches of the trees, she urged on her horse by the unsparing use of the whip at the bridle-end. All the energy and courage that the presence of immediate danger had summoned, and which had enabled Ernestine to conduct herself so stoutly and so well throughout the trying events of the evening and night, were now passing away, and she could only weep and murmur the name of her sister.
She had left the wood far behind her, and was now in the open country, where all was still and solemn; and, as she had long since committed the bridle to the care of her horse, on recovering sufficiently she found that he had slackened his pace, and commenced cropping the long grass that grew by the wayside.
She looked around, and began to reflect on the many terrors and peculiarities of her situation.
The moon was waning, and its pale white disc was slowly sinking behind the flat shore of Eckernfiörd, and the long shadows of every tree and hedge were thrown far across the fallow and neglected fields. All was quiet and voiceless as a vast burial-ground. There was no house near. Without money, jewels, or friends, she was alone in a land where the rough, morose, and uncultivated boors were jealous of all strangers, and unmerciful to the straggling Imperialists, whom they slew without mercy wherever they met them. Her mind became filled with new alarms, and the poor girl knew not which way to turn for succour or for protection. Bandolo had spoken of having sold her sister to Merodé, who occupied Fredricksort. She shuddered at the idea of Merodé and his officers, but her first thought was to seek that fortress; then she paused. Should her sister really be there, she could only hope to achieve her freedom by being herself free. To visit Fredricksort might be to become also a prisoner; besides, bad as Merodé was, Gabrielle might be safer with him than she could have been with Bandolo. Where now were all their father's rank and power, when the debauched Merodé, and Tilly's ruffian follower, dared to commit the acts they had done? Her mind became a prey to the most bitter anguish. Then came other ideas; for as the white moon disappeared, and inky blackness stole over the darkened sea and level landscape, her German education brought many a strange and wild story to her memory, and made her tremble as she watched the quaint, fantastic shapes assumed by every object between her and the distant horizon, where, rising from a black and strongly defied outline, there shone a pallid flush of light, but silvery and uncertain, the last rays of the moon that had waned; and she was weak enough to fear that a swarm of little Trolds might surround her; for, unlike the beautiful and merry little fairies of our Scottish traditions, those of Denmark are impish, heavy, and ungainly gnomes, with hump-backs and long hook-noses, wearing grey doublets and conical red caps; but, as the land was moorish and level, she feared still more to meet with some of the Elk people, who are usually said to dwell in such places, and whose touch causes a wasting that ends in death.