“What means this conduct, my lord?” inquired his amazed and alarmed host.
“Mean, sirrah! mean!” replied the Lord of Hermitage—“why, it means that I am about to do your daughter an honour.” And, without waiting for the guidance he had demanded, he rushed out of the apartment—when he was instantly joined by two of his followers, with drawn swords in their hands—and proceeded to search for the chamber in which the object of his villany was confined. Having quickly found the apartment, the ruffians, after in vain soliciting admittance from its inmate, whom the previous noise had alarmed, began to force the doors. While they were thus employed, Foster, who had, in the meantime, armed himself, and brought two or three of his men to his assistance, suddenly rushed in amongst the assailants, and a close and sanguinary contest immediately ensued.
At this moment, the unfortunate young lady, hearing her father’s voice raised in anger, and the clashing of swords in the passage which led to her apartment, undid the door, and frantically rushed into the midst of the conflict. Fatal indiscretion! She had scarcely stepped from her room, when the thrust of a sword (not, however, meant for her) reached her heart, and she fell, lifeless, amongst the feet of the combatants.
In a few seconds afterwards, her unhappy father also fell, mortally wounded; when the fiends, perceiving the purposes of their villany thus fearfully frustrated, instantly quitted the house, mounted their horses, and fled.
This new atrocity of the Lord of Hermitage—for he had been guilty of many, although, perhaps, this was the most hideous of all—excited, when it became known, such a universal feeling of horror throughout the country, that the miscreant, powerful as he was, was obliged to fly the kingdom, and betake himself to a foreign land, to avoid the popular vengeance with which he was threatened. But his crime was of too deep a dye to escape due punishment, even on earth. There was one whose fierce and enduring thirst for revenge he could not evade—one to escape whom all his windings and doublings were vain, and from whose arm, neither distance of place or time could ultimately protect him.
On hearing of the dreadful catastrophe, Isabella’s lover, Armstrong, vowed he would have a deadly revenge, and that he would never cease from the pursuit of the Lord of Hermitage, while both remained in life, till he had accomplished his destruction; and, in pursuance of this oath (which he swore on the grave of his lover), he abandoned home and friends, assumed the habit of a palmer, and set out in quest of the murderer of Isabella Foster and her father.
On leaving the country, the infamous Lord of Hermitage directed his steps to London, where he remained for some time in concealment; for the singular atrocity of his crime, which he had no doubt would soon be known far and wide, made him consider himself unsafe, even in the heart of the English capital; and unsafe, even here, he certainly was, although unaware of the particular character of the danger that threatened him; for Armstrong had traced him, and he only escaped him by the chance circumstance of his leaving London for the Continent, one single day before his pursuer had discovered his retreat. Similar fortuitous circumstances saved him, at various subsequent terms in the chase; but the bloodhound that tracked him, though often thrown out, kept steadily to his purpose, and as often regained as he lost the scent of his victim.
For two full years, the lover of Isabella Foster pursued her murderer with unabated eagerness and unflagging zeal; and, for two full years, the former, from various accidental circumstances, escaped the vengeance that was thus, although unknown to him, so closely pursuing him.
At the expiry of these two years, however, the Lord of Hermitage, guided, in some measure, we suppose, by a similar instinct with that which directs the hare back to her form, however wide and numerous may have been the evolutions of her intermediate career, sought his own castle again; entertaining also, doubtless, a hope that his atrocious crime, though it could not possibly be forgotten, would now be contemplated with less intensity of feeling than on its first occurrence.