One moment Erroll stood erect, his fair hair blowing in the wind, his eyes full open to the light; then—he reeled slightly backward, raised his right arm, and fired in the air! The bullet flew far and harmless amidst the forest foliage, his arm dropped, and without sign or sound he fell down upon the sodden turf, his head striking against the earth with a dull echo, his hands drawing up the rank herbage by the roots, as they closed convulsively in one brief spasm.
He was shot through the heart.
And the sun sank out of sight, leaving a dusky, sultry gloom to brood over the noxious brakes and sullen stagnant waters, leaving the world to Night, as fitting watch and shroud of Crime; and those who stood there were stricken with a ghastly horror, were paralysed by a vague and sudden awe, for they knew that they were in the presence of death, and that the hand which had dealt it was the hand of his chosen friend. But he, who had slain him, more coldly, more pitilessly than the merciful amongst us would slay a dog, stood unmoved in the shadow, with his ruthless calm, his deadly serenity, which had no remorse as it had had no mercy, while about his lips there was a cold and evil smile, and in his eyes gleamed the lurid flame of a tiger's triumph—the triumph when it has tasted blood, and slaked its thirst in life.
"Voyez!—il est mort!"
The words, uttered in his ear by Valdor, were hoarse and almost tremulous; but he heard and assented to them unmoved. An exultant light shone and glittered in his eyes; he had avenged himself and her! Life was the sole price that his revenge had set; his purpose had been as iron, and his soul was as bronze. He went nearer, leisurely, and stooped and looked at the work of his hand. In the gloom the dark-red blood could yet be clearly seen, slowly welling out and staining the clotted herbage as it flowed, while one stray gleam of light still stole across, as if in love and pity, and played about the long fair hair which trailed amidst the grass.
Life still lingered, faintly, flickeringly, as though both to leave for ever that which one brief moment before had been instinct with all its richest glory; the eyes opened wide once more, and looked up to the evening skies with a wild, delirious, appealing pain, and the lips which were growing white and drawn moved in a gasping prayer:
"Oh, God! I forgive—I forgive. He did not know"——
Then his head fell back, and his eyes gazed upward without sight or sense, and murmuring low a woman's name, "Lucille! Lucille!" while one last breath shivered like a deep-drawn sigh through all his frame—he died. And his murderer stood by to see the shudder convulse the rigid limbs, and count each lingering pang—calm, pitiless, unmoved, his face so serene in its chill indifference, its brutal and unnatural tranquillity, whilst beneath the drooped lids his eyes watched with the dark glitter of a triumphant vengeance the last agony of the man whom he had loved, that the two who were with him in this ghastly hour shrank involuntarily from his side, awed more by the Living than the Dead. Almost unconsciously they watched him, fascinated basilisk-wise, as he stooped and severed a long flake of hair that was soiled by the dank earth and wet with the dew: unarrested they let him turn away with the golden lock in his hand and the fatal calm on his face, and move to the spot where his horse was waiting. The beat of the hoofs rang muffled on the turf, growing fainter and fainter as the gallop receded. Strathmore rode to her whose bidding had steeled his arm, and whose soft embrace would be his reward; rode swift and hard, with his hand closing fast on the promised pledge of his vengeance; while behind him, in the shadows of the falling night, lay a man whom he had once loved, whom he had now slain, with the light of early stars breaking pale and cold, to shine upon the oozing blood as it trailed slowly in its death-stream through the grasses, staining red the arid turf.
And the sun had gone down upon his wrath.