The storm was each moment increasing; and it howled, and shrieked, and tore through the trees, as though it had risen in vengeance against him. He thought of that other night of storm and tempest, on which his loving, much-wronged child wife had perished by the steel of the assassin. He thought of Sibyl, alone and doomed, waiting for death in her prison-cell. And then, with startling suddenness, flashed across his mind the strange vision that, years before, he had seen and scoffed at, in a far off land. One by one, three visions had been realized; and now only one—the death on the scaffold—was to come.
The night; the storm; the forest; the wounded man, all were here; and now was death to come, and end all this mortal strife, and close forever the dark drama of his life.
While these thoughts were yet passing through his mind, a sound smote his ear that startled him from the deadly stupor into which he was fast falling. It was no crash of storm, this; no sound of wind and rain among the trees; but the sound of human footsteps flying wildly through the storm. He strove to raise himself and cry out; but his voice was lost in the wild uproar around; and he was about to fall back in despair, when the fugitive from the storm struck against him, and fell over him on the ground.
The shock of the sudden concussion nearly stunned Willard; but the person who had fallen, uttering a sharp ejaculation, was up again in an instant, bending over him.
By the light of the rapid flashes of lightning, he beheld a woman with dark, flowing hair, and wild, maniac eyes—the same startling vision he had twice before seen in Campbell's Isle.
With a shriek that pierced high above the storm, she sprang up, and sped away through the woods with the speed of an arrow shot from a bow.
The unexpected sight of this unearthly-looking visitant was too much for nature, in his present exhausted state, to bear; and falling heavily back, the dark night of insensibility closed around him.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE DEAD ALIVE.
—"Am I already mad?
And does delirium utter such sweet words
Into a dreamer's ear?"—LADY OF LYONS.