The queen of the isle

by May Agnes Fleming

Willard Drummond's face grew livid, and his brain reeled at the words.

"He says she was raving crazy for awhile, and that delayed it so long; but the doctor's brought her to, and now the execution's going to take place day after to-morrow."

His mother's warning glance toward Willard came too late. With the look of a madman, he rushed from the house. A horse, the boy had been riding, stood saddled at the gate. He sprang on his back, and striking him a furious blow, dashed off under the first moment's fierce excitement, as he had done before, unheeding, uncaring whither he went.

He saw not, heeded not the coming storm; but one idea filled heart and brain—that of escaping, of flying far away, of never again beholding the scene of so many horrors.

Night was at hand, bearing in its dark, lowering face the storm that all day had been threatening. An oppressive stillness, a burning heat filled the air, and the old trees creaked, groaned, and tossed their long, weird arms with a dreary moaning noise, as though in pain. A hot, gusty wind lifted at intervals the heavy, dark hair off his burning brow, but without cooling it. It rustled the dry leaves till they whirled in a shower around him; but he heeded it not; he would hardly have heeded the wildest hurricane in that moment.

He had reached the forest, and now his course becoming from necessity less rapid, he could look around him and note the change of weather. By the last sickly light of the dying day, he saw a tempest was at hand, and he hailed it with a sort of mad exultation, to think that nature, convulsed by the storm, would be so much more in unison with the storm raging within his own breast.

He gave the frowning face of the sky but one momentary glance, for another and far more terrible sight was ever before his agonized eyes—it was the form, the beautiful form of his worshiped Sibyl, swinging between heaven and earth, convulsed in the agony of that horrible death; exposed to the gaze, to the shouts and derision of the mob; her lovely face darkened and convulsed until death would mercifully put an end to her tortures.

The awful vision seemed driving him mad. With something like the shriek of a maniac, he struck the animal he bestrode a furious blow to drive him on. The horse bounded madly on for a few paces; but at that moment a vivid sheet of lightning blazed across their path, and he suddenly stopped, reared himself almost upright, and with a snort of fear turned and fled. Faint from recent illness, Willard lost his seat, and was hurled, wounded and bleeding, to the earth.

And now, alone, wounded, and helpless in the vast old woods, the storm was upon him in its might.

It is said that, in the moment that elapses before some sudden and terrible death, all the events of our lives pass with the rapidity of lightning through our minds. So was it now with Willard Drummond. As he lay prostrate, bleeding, and helpless, all the great wrongs he had done, all he had made others suffer, rose before him with a bitterness exceeding that of death. Through him Christie was murdered; through him Sibyl was now to die a felon's ignominious death.