More drink was administered; and then the attendant, by command of the invalid himself, mounted one of the horses, and galloped off to Content.
Loftus Vaughan was alone!
Volume Three—Chapter Eighteen.
A Hideous Intruder.
Loftus Vaughan was not long alone, though the company that came first to intrude on the solitude that surrounded him was such as no man, either living or dying, would desire to see by his bedside.
The black groom had galloped off for help; and ere the sound of his horse’s hoofs had ceased to reverberate through the unclayed chinks of the cabin, the shadow of a human form, projected through the open doorway, was flung darkly upon the floor.
The sick man, stretched upon the cane couch, was suffering extreme pain, and giving way to it by incessant groaning. Nevertheless, he saw the shadow as it fell upon the floor; and this, with the sudden darkening of the door, admonished him that someone was outside, and about to enter.
It might be supposed that the presence of any living being would at that moment have pleased him—as a relief to that lugubrious loneliness that surrounded him; and perhaps the presence of a living being would have produced that effect. But in that shadow which had fallen across the floor, the sick man saw, or fancied he saw, the form of one who should have been long since dead—the form of Chakra the myal-man!