"No," she answered gravely, as she gazed at the ground; "it is the pale faces—see!" And she pointed to the earth, where bending I could dimly see the print of a shoe.
"Let us go on, Winona!" I cried, alarmed at the sight, and I followed the trail of blood, where it led out again to the path.
"See!" she cried, and she pointed to the stream of blood. "One of the pale ones was struck down, but he sprang up and followed his enemies," and brushing by me, she ran on down the path.
For a few minutes we kept on after the bloody track, then turning from the path, we followed the blood into the woods down a little hillock and up under a great oak, where I could dimly see the figure of a man, as with upturned face he lay quiet and still.
"The wounded man almost caught one of those who struck him!" she cried excitedly, pointing to a deep track, as where one had leaped in terror and then sprang forward in desperation.
I did not answer, but breaking into a run, I rushed by her and up the slope to where that ghastly figure lay beneath the tree. As I stood beside him, he stirred and opened his bloodshot eyes, wearily looking up at me—it was DeNortier, and wounded unto death, it required no leech to see that. Beside him lay the dead body of the apothecary, Marsden, a look of terror awful to behold upon his pale face.
One stiff hand clutched some leaves, the other lay outstretched above his head, as though in despair. He had died like a trapped rat; the ghastly look upon his face was more significant than words, for it showed the agony and despair of the last moment, when the freebooter had struck him down. There still quivered in his lifeless frame the keen blade of a sword, which had been thrust through his body and deep into the ground, pinning him down to writhe and die like a butterfly transfixed by a needle.
The Count DeNortier looked at me a moment with his glassy eyes, and then drew back from me.
"Art come to torment me, pale shade?" he said. "Away! A few moments and I will be even as thou art."
"I am no shade," I answered, "but a man of flesh and blood like thyself."