Dark thoughts came crowding into my mind at this discovery—another shadow across my heart. I perceived at once a new situation of peril for my betrothed—new, and strange, and awful.
I saw her in the midst of a troop of neighing wild-horses—stallions with fiery eyes and red steaming nostrils—these perhaps angry at the white steed, and jealous of his approach to the manada; in mad rage rushing upon him with open mouth and yellow glistening teeth; rearing around and above him, and striking down with deadly desperate hoof— Oh, it was a horrid apprehension, a fearful fancy!
Yet, fearful as it was, it proved to be the exact shadow of a reality. As the mirage refracts distant objects upon the retina of the eye, so some spiritual mirage must have thrown upon my mind the image of things that were real. Not distant, though then unseen—not distant was the real.
Rapidly I ascended another swell of the prairie, and from its crest beheld almost the counterpart of the terrible scene that my imagination had conjured up!
Was it a dream? was it still fancy that was cheating my eyes? No; there was the wild-horse drove; there the rearing, screaming stallions; there the white steed in their midst—he too rearing erect—there upon his back—
“O God! look down in mercy—save her! save her!”