Was she dead? Would that wild, appalling shriek be repeated? He listened, palsied with horror. Naught met his ear but the shrieking of the warring elements.
Just at that instant there came a blaze of lightning, as though heaven and earth were on fire, and he beheld that little, child-like form lying stiff and rigid at his feet, the head fallen back; the blue lips parted, as if from them the quivering soul had taken its flight; the arms lying limp and lifeless by her side; the bright, golden hair, half shading, the cold, beautiful face, on which the pitiless rain wildly beat.
All his jealousy, his hatred, passed away with that pitiful sight; and the passionate love, the adoring worship his heart had first felt for her returned like a swelling flood. The memory of the time when she had left home, and friends, and all, to fly with him—when she had first been his loved and loving bride—bright, happy, and beautiful—came back in overwhelming force. And now she was dead—dead by his hand!
"Oh, Heaven! what have I done? Oh, my wife! my wife! my beautiful murdered Laura! Oh, what have I done? My love! speak—look up! live for me once more! Oh, she is dead! and I am her murderer!" And with a shriek of agony, the wretched man fell prone on his face beside her.
But now there came another sound more terrible than all else. Swollen by the heavy rain, the sea was rising on the island.
With the roar of a beast of prey, the furious waves, lashing themselves into foam, rushed upon the shore. It recalled the miserable assassin from his frenzy of despair; and with the instinct of self-preservation that never deserts us while life remains, he seized the cold, stark form, and fled wildly up the beach.
But just then—had the infernal regions yielded up their hosts to pursue him?—a human form, bearing tin figure of a woman, revealed by the quick flashes of lightning, came flying toward him, her uncovered hair streaming in the gale—-her wild eyes glaring with the fires of madness.
Her eyes fell upon him and his bleeding burden at the same instant; and throwing up her arms, with a piercing cry of "Murder! murder!" that pealed high above the raging of the storm, she fled in the direction of Campbell's Lodge.
That appalling cry, that awful apparition, drove the last spark of reason from his maddening brain. With a perfect yell of terror, he flung his lifeless burden on the rocks, and fled from the spot as if pursued by the avenger of blood.