Ch. 26 - Retribution

As, in the progress of Life, each man pursues his course with the
passions, good and evil, set, as it were, on either side of him; and
viewing their results in the actions of his fellow-men, finds his
attention, while still attracted by the spectacle of what is noble and
virtuous, suddenly challenged by the opposite display of what is mean
and criminal--so, in the progress of this narrative, which aims to be
the reflection of Life, the reader who has journeyed with us thus far,
and who may now be inclined to follow the little procession of Christian
devotees, to walk by the side of the afflicted father, and to hold with
him the hand of his ill-fated child, is yet, in obedience to the
conditions of the story, required to turn back for awhile to the
contemplation of its darker passages of guilt and terror--he must enter
the temple again; but he will enter it for the last time.

The scene before the altar of idols was fast proceeding to its fatal
climax.

The Pagan's frenzy had exhausted itself in its own fury--his insanity
was assuming a quieter and a more dangerous form; his eye grew cunning
and suspicious; a stealthy deliberation and watchfulness appeared in all
his actions. He now slowly lifted his foot from Goisvintha's breast,
and raised his hands at the same time to strike her back if she should
attempt to escape. Seeing that she lay senseless from her fall, he left
her; retired to one of the corners of the temple, took from it a rope
that lay there, and returning, bound her arms behind her at the hands
and wrists. The rope cut deep through the skin--the pain restored her
to her senses; she suffered the sharp agony in her own body, in the same
place where she had inflicted it on the young chieftain at the farm-
house beyond the suburbs.

The minute after, she felt herself dragged along the ground, farther
into the interior of the building. The madman drew her up to the iron
gates of the passage through the partition, and fastening the end of the
rope to them, left her there. This part of the temple was enveloped in
total darkness--her assailant addressed not a word to her--she could not
obtain even a glimpse of his form, but she could hear him still laughing
to himself in hoarse, monotonous tones, that sounded now near, and now
distant again.

She abandoned herself as lost--prematurely devoted to the torment and
death that she had anticipated; but, as yet, her masculine resolution
and energy did not decline. The very intensity of the anguish she
suffered from the bindings at her wrists, producing a fierce bodily
effort to resist it, strengthened her iron-strung nerves. She neither
cried for help nor appealed to the Pagan for pity. The gloomy fatalism
which she had inherited from her