He gazed upon it from the “shore” of the prairie-island; himself unseen under its shadows, and apparently endeavouring to remain so.
And yet, with all his trembling and the desire to keep concealed, he was following it round and round, on the circumference of an inner circle, as if some magnetic power was constraining him to keep on the same radius, of which the point occupied by the Headless Horseman was a prolongation!
More than this. He had seen the latter before entering the island. He had seen him far off, and might easily have shunned him. But instead of doing so, he had immediately commenced making approach towards him!
He had continued it—using the timber as a screen, and acting as one who stalks the timid stag, with the difference of a heart-dread which no deer-stalker could ever know.
He had continued it; until the shelter of the motte gave him a momentary respite, not from fear, but the apprehension of a failure.
He had not ridden ten miles across the prairie without a design; and it was this that caused him to go so cautiously—guiding his horse over the softest turf, and through the selvedge of the chapparal—in such a way as neither to expose his person to view, nor cause a rustle among the branches, that might be heard to the distance of ten yards.
No one observing his manoeuvres as he moved amid the timber island, could have mistaken their meaning—at least so far as related to the object for which they were being made.
His eye was upon the Headless Horseman, his whole soul absorbed in watching the movements of the latter—by which he appeared to regulate his own.
At first, fear seemed to be his prevailing thought. After a time, it was succeeded by an impatience that partially emboldened him. The latter plainly sprang from his perceiving, that the Headless Horseman, instead of approaching the timber, still kept at a regular distance of two hundred yards from its edge.
That this chafed him was evident from a string of soliloquies, muttered half aloud. They were not free from blasphemy; but that was characteristic of the man who pronounced them.