Just then the music ceased, at the words, "promenade all—to your seats!" and the dancers separated. Jack Fyffe gave vent to a startling yell, and quickly raising his rifle, discharged it with an instantaneous aim.
The wild cry that followed told how true had been his aim; but it was duplicated. Quick as had been his motion, another flash had streamed out upon the darkness, from the spot at which he had aimed, and two cries were mingled with the reverberating echoes, and then came a dull, heavy fall upon the floor of the pavilion.
Jack did not glance toward the latter, but with an angry howl, more like that of a famished wild beast than a man, leaped forward toward the spot from whence had come the secret shot. A dark form lay there, motionless and silent, but he heeded not that. One by one the chambers of his revolver were emptied, and then he spurned from him with his foot the dead and mangled form of the mongrel assassin, Polk Redlaw.
In the pavilion a pale and horrified group were gathered, some bending over the bleeding, senseless form of Henry Duaber, while others attended to the fainting girl who was so soon to have become his bride. Heads were gravely shaken in answer to inquiring looks; their decision was that the young man would never speak again.
He breathed faintly, but each respiration seemed as if it would be his last. The blood slowly oozed from a ghastly wound upon his head, and they said that his brain had been pierced.
But we are happy to be enabled to state that they were greatly mistaken; had it been true, it would have made too sorrowful an ending to our story—one that the reader might well grumble at; for there had been no marriage as yet, and what is a novel without that?
In fact, he recovered his senses long before Nora did, and when his wound was washed, it was found that the bullet had only cut a deep gash upon his head, merely stunning him for the time being. When he had once convinced Nora that he was really unharmed, he declared he only had a slight headache, and made the assertion good by carrying out the original programme, and heroically passing the trying ordeal of changing the young lady into Mrs. Nora Duaber, that same night.
The dance was broken up by this catastrophe, and while no one expressed pity for the dead man, he was reverently buried, before another sun shone. Nora knew nothing of this at the time, and her joy was unclouded, for more reasons than one.
And now we must leave them, with only a few parting words.
The young couple duly entered the "big house," where, with aunt Eunice for a housekeeper, they led a peaceful, happy life. A few years since, James Duaber died, loved and respected by all who knew him; the fact of his old reckless life having never transpired, the secret being safe between the three.