Chapter 22 - Page 2

last words, which slid from him, as it were
unawares, while doubtless he was calling to mind the glories of the
English court, the gallant Sir Piercie Shafton stretched out his
limbs--groaned deeply, shut his eyes, and became motionless.

The victor tore his hair for very sorrow, as he looked on the pale
countenance of his victim. Life, he thought, had not utterly fled, but
without better aid than his own, he saw not how it could be preserved.

"Why," he exclaimed in vain penitence, "why did I provoke him to an
issue so fatal! Would to God I had submitted to the worst insult man
could receive from man, rather than be the bloody instrument of this
bloody deed--and doubly cursed be this evil-boding spot, which,
haunted as I knew it to be by a witch or a devil, I yet chose for the
place of combat! In any other place, save this, there had been help to
be gotten by speed of foot, or by uplifting of voice--but here there
is no one to be found by search, no one to hear my shouts, save the
evil spirit who has counselled this mischief. It is not her hour--I
will essay the spell howsoever; and if she can give me aid, she
_shall_ do it, or know of what a madman is capable even against
those of another world!"

He spurned his bloody shoe from his foot, and repeated the spell with
which the reader is well acquainted; but there was neither voice,
apparition, nor signal of answer. The youth, in the impatience of his
despair, and with the rash hardihood which formed the basis of his
character, shouted aloud, "Witch--Sorceress--Fiend!--art thou deaf to
my cries of help, and so ready to appear and answer those of
vengeance? Arise and speak to me, or I will choke up thy fountain,
tear down thy hollybush, and leave thy haunt as waste and bare as thy
fatal assistance has made me waste of comfort and bare of
counsel!"--This furious and raving invocation was suddenly interrupted
by a distant sound, resembling a hollo, from the gorge of the ravine.
"Now may Saint Mary be praised," said the youth, hastily fastening his
sandal, "I hear the voice of some living man, who may give me counsel
and help in this fearful extremity."

Having donned his sandal, Halbert Glendinning, hallooing at intervals,
in answer to the sound which he had heard, ran with the speed of a
hunted buck down the rugged defile, as if paradise had been before
him, hell and all her furies behind, and his eternal happiness or
misery had depended upon the speed which he exerted. In a space
incredibly short for any one but a Scottish mountaineer having his
nerves strung by the deepest and most passionate interest, the youth
reached the entrance of the ravine, through which the rill that flows
down