Thee will I bear to a lovely spot,
Where our hands shall be joined, and our sorrows forgot;
There thou yet shall be my bride.
Byron.
It is, unhappily, the nature of jealousy to magnify small things into
great ones, and to build upon the flimsiest supposition a series of
incidents inflaming to the brain of the jaundiced thinker, but which,
nevertheless, have no foundation in fact. Unfortunately, the jealous too
often act upon these probabilities as if they had really happened, and
in the paroxysms of rage and agony created by unworthy visions, reason
takes to flight, and the worst extravagances are the result.
This was the case with Colonel Mires. He had assumed interviews between
Flora and young Vivian which had never taken place. His prurient mind,
not improved by his residence in India, had wrought out love passages
which had not occurred, and he groaned, gnashed his teeth, and even wept
with agony.
That he passionately loved Flora, even unto frenzy, was beyond a doubt,
and that it worked him up to a pitch of insanity is equally true, as his
recent conduct proved. In India, in command of a native regiment, his
power was great--he was, in a small sphere, a monarch; in England,
he felt curbed, trammelled, shackled, and if he had not had an Indian
servant, in close attendance, to expend that love and inordinate desire
for supreme command upon, he would have been constantly committing some
outrageous outbreak of temper, which, of necessity, would have often
precipitated him into trouble.
He chafed at the restraint the state of society in England placed upon
him; and when it was impossible to conceal from himself that he was the
veriest slave to Flora’s beauty, he was infuriate to find that his wish,
no less than his will, went for nothing in effecting a result in which
the happiness or misery of his whole future life was involved.
The confession of love for Vivian, which Flora had made to her father,
and the expressed determination of old Wilton to give her hand to the
Honorable Lester Vane, scattered any floating delusive hopes he might
have entertained. He saw that she could only become his by some bold act
of villany, perpetrated regardless of all consequences attendant upon
its frustration.
He formed a plan with subtlety, and made his arrangements with skill.
He went over the whole distance between Harleydale and Southampton
carefully, making a chart of the bye-ways. He provided relays of horses
at unfrequented spots; and at every house, where it would be necessary
to rest for the night or stay for refreshment, he palmed off on the host
a story that his task was the distressing one of conveying a young lady,
afflicted with raving insanity, to an asylum for lunatics. Every minute
detail of the plan was carefully considered before adoption, and every
possible contingency foreseen and provided against.
There was one exception!
It did not strike Colonel Mires that he was distrusted, suspected of
evil machinations, and was, therefore, closely watched.
Such a probability was omitted from his calculations. How, in fact,
was he to conjecture that Nathan Gomer, having perused his physiognomy
carefully, while Vivian was replying to the charges he had made against
him, had formed a conclusion most unfavourable to him; that, in short,
the shrewd little man had believed he read in the workings of his
features a strong determination to commit an evil deed, by which Vivian
directly and Flora indirectly would be made to suffer.
Yet such was the fact; and Nathan Gomer was not the man to pause in
doubt when he suspected evil. Having several agents in his pay, he
instructed one upon whom he could rely, and from that moment Colonel
Mires went nowhere abroad without an unknown attendant, of whose
existence he was unconscious, but who dogged his footsteps with untiring
pertinacity.
The scheme of the abduction was, therefore, by the revelations of his
agent gradually unfolded to Nathan Gomer; who let the arrangements of
the Colonel proceed until the culminating point was at hand; when he
communicated with young Vivian; and placed in his hands the power--as he
calculated--of appearing upon the scene at a moment of vital importance
to Flora; and of appearing once more before old Wilton as the saviour of
his daughter’s honour as he had been of her life.
Hal Vivian was visited by Nathan Gomer as he was making preparation to
leave England; to fulfil a short engagement offered him on high terms in
the United States, the acceptance of which had been pressed, upon him
by the first manufacturing goldsmith in England. The communication
he received altered his plan, although it happened that he reached
Harleydale too late to prevent Flora being carried off; but yet in time
to save the life of Wilton.
Thus it fell out. Upon reaching the village of Harleydale; he had
an interview with Gomer’s agent, who told him that a close carriage
belonging to Colonel Mires was in a bye-lane contiguous to Harleydale
park; and the Colonel himself was somewhere up in the woods; lying in
wait; it was supposed; for Flora; in order to carry his project into
execution. It was arranged that the agent should watch the carriage; and
Hal should go up into the woods and hunt up the Colonel. The result of
this arrangement has been seen. He saved old Wilton from the murderous
weapon of Chewkle, and the Colonel got safely off with Flora, for
the agent had to rush back to the village, when he saw Flora conveyed
senseless to the carriage, to mount a horse--already provided--to follow
the vehicle, that he might, at the first place where assistance was to
be obtained, stop the further progress of the outrage upon Miss Wilton’s
liberty.
He left a note for Vivian, who obtained from it information of the
direction he was to pursue; and though not much used to riding, his
horsemanship, under the impulse which was almost maddening, would have
done honour to a steeple-chase rider.
Colonel Mires had had the shrewdness to provide a pair of strong, fleet
horses for the start. He instructed his coachman to do the first stage
of ten miles at a hand gallop. The man obeyed, even though the roads
were heavy, the ruts deep, and the carriage several times was within an
ace of being overturned.
The second stage, with fresh horses, was performed in a similar manner,
though at a less rate of speed, because the horses were not so good,
and, being pushed, all but knocked up at their eighth mile. The third
stage was commenced with another relay of horses, and proceeded much at
the same rate on a fifteen-mile journey, unchecked and with undiminished
speed.
No delay, except changing horses, had taken place from the moment of
departure as yet; but the Colonel believing that, when he had placed
thirty-five miles between him and Harleydale, accomplishing the distance
in four hours, he might with safety pause for a short time in order
to give his coachman rest; and himself obtain some refreshment. He
determined to do so, and gave his Indian servant orders to that effect.
No pursuer as yet had appeared in sight, nor any sign that, even if
Flora had been missed, a clue elucidating the mystery surrounding her
abrupt disappearance had been obtained.
Indeed he expected none: in the first place there had not been time; in
the second, he had so full a conviction of the successful secrecy of his
operations, that he calculated upon being the very last person who would
be charged with having anything to do with Flora’s abduction.
Flora had been, soon after the carriage was set in motion, restored by
the attentions of the ayah to consciousness, and on opening her eyes
gazed wildly round her. It was some little time before she could realise
her position. At length the face of Colonel Mires and the motion of the
vehicle in which she was seated, supported in the arms of the Indian
woman, gave her some notion of her true situation, and rousing herself,
she made an effort to recall the past, and then said to Colonel
Mires----
“What is the meaning, sir, of this outrage?--how is it that I find
myself alone with you and this Indian servant, torn from my home, and
borne with frightful rapidity in an unknown direction?”
Colonel Mires turned his inflamed eyes upon her and, in a tone of
passionate tenderness, replied--
“Ask your more than mortal beauty and your in difference to my almost
more than mortal love for you. Oh! Flora, I cannot see you, cannot know
you to be another’s; my adoration for you is without limit; and if I
have resorted to a bold step, it is only because my passion for you
would pause at nothing to ensure my happiness.”
“You have resorted to a mean and wicked artifice to place me in your
power, Colonel Mires!” she exclaimed, awaiting his answer with an
intensity of eagerness which it was somewhat remarkable he did not
notice.
“All stratagems, it is said, are fair in love-matters,” he replied. “If
I adopted one which has occasioned you pain, I regret its action, though
I rejoice at its result, for it gave me you. Understand me, sweet Flora,
you must be mine--it will be impossible for you to escape that issue;
but I shall treat you with the greatest possible respect until we are
united. Your dignity shall not be insulted, nor your modesty offended,
by act, by word, or look. Every desire or wish you may form, save that
of severing yourself from me, shall be gratified. I will be your slave,
ministering to your will in all things, except in aught that would take
you from me. You will find me scrupulously adhere to this promise in
every respect. At the same time, let me inform you that any attempt to
release yourself will be futile. My arrangements have been so made that
all entreaties and appeals for assistance will be in vain. We are now on
our way to Southampton, from thence, by packet, direct to Madeira. Only
at appointed places shall we stay; and at each place the persons there
are prepared to see with me a young lady of surpassing beauty, but a
confirmed lunatic--insane upon the fancy that she is being forcibly
abducted from home. I deem it advisable to make you thus much acquainted
with my plan to spare you the agony of useless displays. At Funchal, I
hope to induce you to become my wife--at least, I will ensure that you
shall never be the bride of another.”
He ceased. Flora made no reply. The note which informed her of the
sudden death of Mr. Vivian, professing to be written by Mrs. Harper,
was a forgery, acknowledged to be such by the Colonel. She cared little
for the rest; she had faith in being rescued, or in effecting an escape
from the clutches of the scoundrel who had made her prisoner and was
bearing her away. She could not conceive how one or the other could be
accomplished, but she had no doubt that she would be set free before she
was forced on board the ship of which he had spoken. Hal was not dead;
she could bear all the rest with comparative equanimity.
As we have said, she did not reply to Mires nor afterwards speak a word
in answer to any remark he made or question he put to her. She declined
all refreshment, though he pressed her earnestly at the end of the third
stage to partake of it, and resisted every inducement to utter a word.
They were well away on the fourth stage, still pursuing unfrequented
bye-roads, when the Indian coachman suddenly put his head down to the
window, and called, “Sahib!”
His tone was so urgent and startling that Colonel Mires leaped from
the recumbent position in which he placed himself for the last hour,
watching with an unswerving, ardent gaze the beautiful but saddened
face of Flora. He bent his head towards his man, and with a brusque tone
demanded what had occurred.
“We are pursued, sahib,” replied the Indian, very decisively.
“Pursued!” echoed the Colonel, rapidly; “by whom?”
The Indian pointed with his whip. They were passing over a hilly tract
of land. At a distance of some four or five miles the road wound along
a ridge which skirted a steep hill. Pursuing that road at a brisk pace
were a couple of horsemen. Mires gazed at them intently; they appeared
to him to be taking a course leading in an opposite direction to that in
which his carriage was proceeding. He said as much.
The Indian gave a significant shake of the head.
“_We_ came same road as dat, sahib; they are on our track--seen ’em
dis half-hour coming same road as us. Tellee true, Sahib.”
The Colonel was, however, disposed to scout the notion that the horsemen
were in pursuit of him. How was it possible, he mentally inquired,
that any clue as yet could have been obtained to the cause of Flora’s
disappearance, and the route he had taken in bearing her off. Suddenly
he forced an oath through his teeth, and he broke out in a clammy
perspiration. It occurred to him that the villain Chewkle might have
betrayed him. No dependence could be placed on mercenaries Experience
had taught him that fact: but, under any circumstances, he thought it
unadvisable to give away even the shadow of a chance against him. He,
therefore, called sharply to his Indian servant--
“Nanoo, push the horses into a smart gallop; we cannot have far to
travel ere we reach the stage where we have arranged to rest for a few
hours. We shall soon ascertain the purpose of those fellows; if they are
really in pursuit, we will prepare for the worst, and stick at nothing.
Should the consequences prove fatal to those who attempt to
intercept us, the fault will be theirs. I have devoted myself to the
accomplishment of my object, and bloodshed will not stay me in effecting
it. Lash the horses--lash them--make them fly over the remaining
distance--give the brutes the thong--away!”
The Indian obeyed; and the horses, under the application of the whip,
administered with an unsparing and unpitying hand, plunged madly
forward, snorting and chafing under the smarting cuts savagely dealt
upon them.
Their route, now from a level road, lay suddenly down a hill with severe
curves in it. Colonel Mires rose up in his seat and looked eagerly after
the horsemen, and his brow clouded as he perceived them abruptly leave
the main road, and, leaping their horses over a breast-hedge which lined
it, strike across country directly towards him.
He sat down muttering an oath; and with indescribable horror Flora
perceived him draw from beneath one of the seats a case which, on his
opening it, disclosed a couple of handsomely-finished revolvers, each
with a long polished single barrel. She saw him examine them carefully
to insure their being ready for instant use, and she observed, with
apprehension and disgust, that his contracted brows and clenched teeth
indicated a most deadly determination.
She felt sick, faint, and dizzy with fear, her terror being
proportionably increased by the frightful speed at which she could see,
by the passing objects, and tell by the awful rocking, jumping motion of
the carriage, they were being borne along.
The Colonel scarcely noticed the tremendous pace into which his
servant had lashed the horses--he was in deep conjecture respecting
his pursuers. He thought it not improbable Mark Wilton might be one;
he hated him, for he had been treated by him with distrust and scarcely
concealed dislike; he felt that it would cost him but little repugnance
to shoot him; but then he was Flora’s brother, and his blood upon his
hands was not calculated to prosper his wooing. Nevertheless, rather
than resign Flora, he was resolved not to stop short even at that crime.
He was roused from his reverie by the horrified moans of the ayah, and
the sudden outcries of his Indian attendant. He thrust his head out of
the carriage window, and saw that the over-driven steeds had been lashed
into frenzy, and in their progress down the hill their own impetus,
added to the enormously accelerated velocity of the vehicle, unchecked
by a drag, had urged them to a speed which was beyond their own control.
Giving way to fright, they dashed blindly on, unheeding in their fearful
wildness the check which the speedily-alarmed Indian attempted to impose
on them the instant he found they were beyond command; but he discovered
his mastery was gone, and he soon lost all presence of mind, and
shrieked to his master that the horses were flying with them to
destruction.
The ayah quickly added her shrieks to the yells of the completely scared
Indian; and Mires, with no little consternation, saw the danger in which
all were placed, but he was powerless to aid. To open the door and jump
out would have been to court death; to remain where he was would be to
incur injuries it was impossible to calculate upon. He pulled down the
window behind the coachman, and commenced an attempt to crawl through
the opening, to gain, if possible, a seat on the box, in the hope that,
uniting his strength with that of the Indian, who still clung to the
reins, the horses might be pulled up.
He had just advanced his head and shoulders through the window when
the carriage was dashed with tremendous force against a tall thick-set
hedge, and the Indian was swept like lightning from the box. The ayah
shrieked frantically, and Flora at the shock fainted away. The horses
plunged and kicked in the madness of terror, and tore the carriage
wheels through the impediments opposed to their progress; they bounded
forward in their impetuous career, and swept down the hill with more
tremendous rapidity than ever. Within a hundred yards the road took
a sharp, abrupt turn; facing the horses stood the stone ruins of an
ancient building. Under no control, completely blind in their frantic
terror, they kept on their distracted way, swerving only by their own
infuriate motions, but turning not as the sharp wind of the road came
upon them.
With a terrific crash they dashed into the ruins, killing themselves,
and shattering the carriage to atoms in one fearful and fatal collision.
In the meantime the two horsemen, who, as it may be surmised, were
Hal Vivian and Nathan Gomer’s agent, whom he had overtaken, were fast
approaching the scene of the disastrous accident. The fugitives would
have been overtaken before they had reached so far, but for the delay in
getting fresh steeds. As it was, Hal was almost knocked up with fatigue,
save that the intensity of his anxiety for Flora’s safety prevented his
feeling the physical exhaustion he would otherwise have done. He would
have kept on until he had dropped rather than risk the possibility of
losing her by even a necessary delay for rest and refreshment.
Having, from the ridge spoken of, when the attention of Colonel Mires
was first drawn to his pursuers; perceived the flying vehicle; at Hal’s
bold suggestion, he and his companion leaped the hedge skirting the
road; and made their way by the direct line instead of pursuing the
circuitous path. The difficulties they had encountered were many, but
nearly half the distance was saved; and they at length--after leaping
gullies and hedges, wading streams, and forcing a way through part of a
plantation, one tangle of undergrowth--emerged at the brow of the
hill down which the carriage containing Flora had been whirled to
annihilation.
At this spot there was a cross-road, but the fresh print of the
carriage-wheels in the soft, sandy, moist soil directed them to the
right route, and they spurred their steeds down the declivity, but with
more caution than the miserable Nanoo had done. Suddenly Hal’s companion
reined in his steed, and jumped off his horse. He picked up a whip, and
held it up.
“Here is a sign we are on the right track,” he said, “the blacky has
dropped his whip.”
On to his horse, and away again. Not more than a hundred yards further,
both pulled in their steeds at one impulse. A garment lay in the middle
of the road.
The agent again dismounted, and picked up a loose great-coat. Then he
ran his eye along the road.
“My God!” he cried, “an accident has happened. Look at the swaying track
of the wheels; their horses have bolted with them, and they have all
been upset. Come on.”
He vaulted into his saddle as he spoke, and on they went again--Hal’s
heart beating almost audibly, in fear that an accident could only be
fraught with some frightful and fatal injury to Flora.
They had not proceeded far when the body of the Indian was discovered
lifeless upon the roadway. He had been struck with tremendous violence
by the arm of a tree, and hurled like lightning to the ground.
It was so evident that he was dead, that neither attempted to dismount,
but both pressed on in silence. The agony of Vivian it is impossible to
depict--large drops of cold perspiration stood upon his forehead, his
features had become livid, and his tongue clave to the roof of his
mouth. His breast heaved, and his breath went and came in short
spasms--he felt as if he should suffocate. A dreadful presentiment
chilled his blood, and made his marrow almost freeze in his bones. He
feared to encounter the sight he anticipated to be awaiting him, and yet
he felt that his steed seemed only to proceed at too slow a pace.
And now they reached the ruins.
Hal uttered a cry of grief and consternation.
Upon the ground lay the shattered fragments of the carriage; amid the
_débris_ of broken wall and dismantled masses of stone were both horses,
frightfully lacerated, and bleeding from the desperate wounds inflicted
by their terrific collision.
The body of the carriage, which had been forced half through a low,
dilapidated archway, appeared to have been, owing to some large blocks
of stone on the ground beneath, crushed by the hyperthyrion of the
ruined doorway, and compressed to almost half its natural height, the
splintered fragments sticking out here and there showing how tremendous
had been the collision, how frightful the destruction.
Both men leaped from their saddles in an instant, and fastening their
horses hastily at a short distance from the spot--for both animals
started and betrayed symptoms of terror, either at the scent of blood or
the confusion before them--they hastened to the carriage.
The silence of the dead reigned around--not even a groan from within
the jambed and crushed vehicle gave token of life still remaining in the
frames of those whom Hal knew it yet contained.
With almost superhuman strength, Hal forced open the twisted, bent,
and partly-shattered door. A hurried, sickening glance showed him the
mangled body of Colonel Mires, half in the carriage and half buried
in the broken box-seat, his head and shoulders hidden from view by the
splinters and ruins of that part of the vehicle.
Doubled up at the bottom of the carriage appeared the forms of two
senseless females; with a groan of acute agony, he wound his arms
tenderly about one of them, and with great difficulty, because of his
gentleness, he contrived to liberate her.
He bore her away from the spot, to a small patch of grass, and there
gently laid her down, and bent over to see if any sign of life remained.
It was Flora whom he had thus rescued, and who, without a token of life,
lay motionless--the very reality it seemed of death in as fair a form as
was ever presented to mortal eye.
Hal knelt by her in a state of frenzy--his eyes inflamed, his throat
swollen; he appeared the incarnation of despair. So intense was his
emotion, that he was wholly without power to move.
The agent bent over the prostrate form of the senseless girl, and
regarded her face with scrutinising eyes. He, though agitated, was of
course not so deeply affected as his companion, and he exclaimed--
“She’s alive--she has only fainted, rub her hands briskly, she’ll come
too directly--I don’t believe she is hurt, she has been frightened into
a swoon.”
The man commenced actively chafing her hands as he spoke. Hal, who had
seemed paralysed, now followed his example. The friction upon her palms
and the cool air which played upon her pallid features had the desired
effect, and shortly her eyelids began to work tremulously, then she
uttered a deep-drawn sigh and opened her eyes.
With a sudden motion she rose half up, looked wildly round her, her dim
sight took in the face of the agent; she turned from him with a shudder,
and her eyes fell upon Hal’s intensely anxious face, within a foot of
her own. A low cry escaped her lips.
“Hal! Hal!” she exclaimed, in a tone of doubt, yet of strong hope.
“It is even I, dear Flora,” he ejaculated, hoarsely, through his parched
lips.
She flung her arms about his neck, and cried, passionately--
“Save me! save me! Hal, save me!”
“You are saved,” he murmured, almost inaudibly; and burying his face on
her shoulder, gave way to a paroxysm of scalding tears.
It was but for a moment that this weakness overcame him. Had he not
suffered the gush of emotion to have its course, he had fallen back in a
fit.
He sprang to his feet, and raising up Flora, conducted her to his horse.
He called to his companion the agent, and bade him remain at the scene
of disaster until he sent up help to him; and, as there was yet
some three miles to traverse before he could reach the house--a lone
one--where it had been Colonel Mires’ intention to stay for some hours,
if not all night, he mounted his horse, and placing Flora before him,
went at an easy canter from the terrible spot.
Oh, that short ride of three miles. Never before did he experience such
unalloyed happiness as he enjoyed during the brief term occupied in
proceeding from the place of accident to the inn.
Flora, saved from a horrible death, was in his arms--his left encircled
her small waist, and her two soft hands met and clasped about his neck.
Her now flushed cheek rested against his, and her gentle eyes looked
into his own with an expression of loving tenderness and a perfect sense
of security.
She was unconscious as yet of the fate of Colonel Mires or his servants.
She knew that she had been on the eve of some dreadful accident. She had
a shadowy sense of a violent crash, but nothing more. She had no wish to
learn what had really happened. It was enough to know that she had been
wrested from the villanous custody of Colonel Mires and by Hal--that was
all she cared for, she sought for no more information: and Vivian, who
was pretty well acquainted with the details, forbore, in her highly
nervous state, to shock her by repeating them to her.
On reaching the inn, Hal despatched the landlord and some men to the
spot where Colonel Mires had met his fate; and upon making inquiries
learned that at no great distance was the main coach-road, leading
to Dorset, and there was a posting-house at which he could obtain a
carriage and post-horses to return to Harleydale.
He was anxious to quit the inn, for Flora’s sake, before the dead bodies
were brought in. He submitted to her that it would be desirable to
return to Harleydale without delay, and she readily assented to anything
which he believed to be for the best. Leaving his tired steed, and
having procured a seat for both in a country grocer’s light cart, they
were driven over to the roadside inn named, and there, having partaken
of some slight refreshment, set out in a post-chaise on their return to
Harleydale.
As yet Hal had not mentioned to Flora a word respecting the condition
of her father. It was his intention, when her mind became more calm, to
prepare her for the event which had taken place.
By mutual consent it seemed that they banished all unpleasant
matters, and reverted to that which was alone of absorbing interest to
both--their love for each other. Even this subject stole by degrees only
into the first place in their conversation; and then Hal honestly and
honourably placed before her his true position, together with the
views of the future which he entertained, and what probation he must
necessarily pass before he might dare to look for the realisation of
the hope first in his heart of hearts. In doing this he sketched the
relation in which she stood to him, pointed out how wide apart their
present stations were, and his own keen sense of the fact, so that,
should she bend obedient to her father’s anxious wish to wed her to one
of her own rank, he felt it would be unmanly in him to blame her, that
it would indeed be ungenerous to think even harshly of her for taking
the step; and if--notwithstanding her present impressions--she fancied
that she would eventually be happier in uniting herself with the object
of her father’s choice, it would be his duty, loving her so truly as he
did, to stand from her path, that she might ensure happiness on earth,
no matter what might be his own fate.
Flora stayed his speech. She leaned her head upon his shoulder, and
placed her hand in his--
“I love you Hal,” she said; “I answer all your suggestions and my
father’s pleadings and commands in those words. I will give my hand to
no other, if not to you; and, oh! Hal,” she cried, with an impetuous
burst of feeling, “I will cast away all the wealth which is to be mine,
the station and its luxuries, to share your fate, whatever it may be--if
you will have me. I look with fright and horror upon any other future. I
can endure anything with you, submit with a smile to the frowns of fate,
bear cheerfully any ills which may arise--you know, Hal, poverty ought
not to scare me--I can bear troubles and trials with you, I can bear
nothing if I am to be torn from you and given to another.”
“My own darling Flora!” cried Hal, pressing her tenderly to his heart.
A flush of heat rushed to his forehead and his cheeks. His heart beat
rapidly, for it occurred to him that he had but to ask her now to return
no more to her father’s home, but to give to him at once her hand, and
thus set the machinations or the claims of all other lovers at defiance.
It was a fearful moment of temptation.
He drew a long breath.
“Will you not, Flora, marry Lester Vane?” he said, in an undertone of
deep earnestness.
“I will die first, Hal,” she replied, with equal fervour.
He pressed his hands to his throbbing temples. He laid his clenched
fist upon his wildly-beating heart. He thought of Flora’s beauty and her
tenderness. Then he thought, too, of her guileless innocence.
A fearful struggle ensued between love, honour and duty.
She would fly with him and give her hand to him at a word. That he knew.
He so adored her, and his chances of obtaining her, save by elopement,
were so very, very remote.
The temptation was a sore one to wrestle with.