RETRIBUTION.
Regardless of the wintry storm, the murderer spurred on the noble animal
he rode; he had no purpose in the flight, he had arranged no plan of
escape; unused to act for himself, his movements were all uncertainty:
now he reined in his horse, and listened as if for pursuers, but none
came: now fancying he heard the mocking laugh he had so often heard, he
dashed forward, as if the furies were behind him; the storm meanwhile
increased in its violence, he felt it not; the warfare of the elements
was calmness to the tumult of his heart; he looked up to the heavens,
but there on the edge of every lurid cloud, he saw it, he saw them; not
one but hundreds: maidens with stony blue eyes, all glaring upon him; he
looked upon the earth, a gibbering madman was running by his side,
howling and hooting in the wind; now so near as almost to touch him: now
hundreds of yards away, but always the same; behind him with his ghastly
mangled head, came the form of his last victim, forward! forward! while
the crashing thunder pealed above his head; he shook his impious hand
against the sky, and still darted onward, till the horse stopped,
snorting on the beach; and there as the great sea, rolled in foaming and
turgid, there, he saw it plain in yon glare of livid lightning, on the
crest of every curling wave, a dark haired lady lay, glaring at him with
eyes that looked like coals of fire; a monster wave came rolling in, and
the frightened horse turned, and seizing the bit between his teeth sped
homeward, but still he saw them in the clouds behind, before, beckoning
to him, calling to him, in the voice of the great wind; on, on, towards
the castle gates, he looked up to the battlements; they were there, on
every turret's top, on every pointed arch, from every window, visible to
him, as though it had been bright daylight he saw them. The horse unable
to check his momentum dashed against the castle gates, and falling over
crushed him in its fall; and there on the very spot where one of his
victims had lain in the sleep of death, there lay the mangled and now
dying man, mingling his blood with that of the expiring animal. Day
dawned, and when the red sun rose, it shone upon a corpse; the storm had
ceased, but the wind had blown the snow from off it, and the laborer who
found the body, rushed from the spot in terror at the horrible
expression of the dead man's face.