CHAPTER XXXII.

ANOTHER STORM WITHIN AND WITHOUT.

--"Let her rave, And prophesy ten thousand, thousand horrors I could join with her now, and bid them come; They fit the present fury of my soul. The stings of love and rage are fixed within, And drive me on to madness."--ROWE.

Loathing the sunlight, hating himself, frantic, maddened, Willard Drummond fled from the courthouse, with the terrific words of the judge searing his heart, burning his brain, scathing his memory, ringing in his ears, like the last awful trump of the mighty arch-angel.

Whither he went, what became of him, he cared not, knew not. Driving his spurs into his horse's Hanks, until the maddened beast fairly flew over the ground, he fled on, and on, and on, with heart on fire, his head in a whirl--feeling as though a wheel of flame were crashing through it; knowing, feeling conscious of but one thing, that Sibyl was condemned to die.

And through him--through his fault; _that_ was the thought that whelmed his soul in anguish and despair. All his treachery, all his falsehood, all his duplicity were known to her now; and dying, she would loathe, hate, and despise him. He could have cursed himself; he could have cursed earth, and heaven, and all mankind in that moment, while the tempests of agony, remorse, despair, and anguish were raging in his soul.

And on, still on, he flew, unheeding the passing hours--unheeding whither he went, until his exhausted and panting horse fell helpless beneath him.

That was the first thing that brought him to his senses. He sprang off the back of the foam-covered and trembling animal, and conscious that his headlong speed and frenzied looks must excite distrust and suspicion, he strove to calm himself, and lead his horse to the nearest inn.

He lifted his head to look about him, and found he had nearly reached N----. Assisting his horse to rise he led him slowly toward an unpretending little farm-house that chanced to be near, and knocked loudly at the door.

The summons was answered by a boy, who stared at Willard with a look of blank dismay.

"I have ridden my horse until, as you perceive, he is unable to proceed any farther. Can he remain here for the night?" he asked, abruptly.

The sound of his voice brought a man to the door, smoking a short, black pipe.

"What is it?" he asked.

"This 'ere man wants to know, if his hoss can stay here to-night, and be took care of," explained the lad.

"Sartin, sartin," responded the man, heartily; "and you, too, sir, if you'll honor us with your company. Johnny, take the gentleman's hoss off to the barn. Walk in, sir--walk in; you look quite as near used up yourself as your beast does. Walk in, and sit down."

Accepting his hospitality with a brief nod, Willard followed him into a large, clean-looking room, where a woman sat knitting, and two girls sat sewing.

The female portion of the establishment got up and dropped him a courtesy, while the old man presented him with a chair. Willard removed his hat from his hot and throbbing brow, and shook back his long, dark, clustering locks, while the girls glanced at him askance, with looks of mingled admiration and fear at his wild and excited appearance.

"Come from the town, I reckon?" said his host, drawing a chair opposite Willard's and resuming his pipe.

A brief "yes," was his sole reply.

"Great doings going on there, I hear; lots of people crowding to it every day."

Another "yes," brief and cold, was his answer.

"Great talk, too, about this trial. You've heard tell of it in course?"

Still another "yes," briefer, sterner, and colder than before, was Willard's answer; but his talkative host was not abashed.

"Very sad affair, I must say," he went on, shaking his head; "and very strange all through. It's wonderful how wimmin will do things when they's in a passion. They say this Miss Campbell went over jest a purpose to kill this other gal, and chucked her body into the sea when she was done."

Here he waited for a reply, but received none; for Willard, with his face shaded by his hand and his falling hair, was thinking, with a bursting heart, of Sibyl, and heard not a word the garrulous old man said.

"This Miss Campbell's beau--what she was going to be married to when she got took up--must be a precious villain. They say he was married to the other young gal on the sly, and nobody ever knowed nothing about it. I'd like to get my hands on him, and give him a good hoss whipping--I vow I would. A little hanging wouldn't hurt him a mite morn'n her!"

At this expose of his feelings, the worthy man again paused for a reply that came not; for Willard Drummond, buried in his own bitter thoughts, was dead to all the world around.

"Yes, there's a great crowd going to town," resumed the old man, thoughtfully, as a light wagon, filled with people, rattled past; "but it ain't no circumstance to what will go to see her hung. I'll go to see that myself; and I'll take the old woman and the girls, too. I've been promising them a treat this long time. S'p'ose you'll be there, too?" he added, determined to get an answer by some means.

But still his strange guest maintained his moody silence, and the old man gave up the effort in despair, and turned the tide of his eloquence upon "Johnny," who entered at this moment, in numberless inquiries concerning the state of the "gentleman's hoss." The girls looked at each other and giggled, and the old woman peered at Willard suspiciously over her spectacles.

A summons to supper was the first thing that aroused him from his reverie; but, with a head giddy, a brain throbbing with tumultuous thoughts, the very sight of food was loathsome to him. Rising to his feet, and standing with difficulty, owing to his strange dizziness, he said:

"As you kindly invited me to remain all night, may I ask to be shown to my room? I do not feel quite well, and I believe I will retire."

The old woman gave her husband a warning glance that revealed plainer than words the danger of having so suspicious a guest in the house; but, the "good, lazy soul," totally regardless of it in his hospitality, exclaimed:

"Sartin, sartin, sir; but won't you take something first? Susan's tea and strawberry short-cake is jest about the tallest sort o' vittals anybody can eat when they ain't well. Do sit down, sir, and take a little snack."

"Not any, thank you," said Willard, faintly, as his headache grew more intense. "I wish to retire immediately."

"Oh, very well, then!" said the old man, adding, in a distinct whisper, "Gals, you'll have to give your room up to the gentleman. This way, sir, if you please."

Willard followed his hospitable guide up a flight of rickety stairs, into a small and scantily furnished little bed-room, hung round with feminine articles of apparel, and containing a comfortable bed.

"I hope you'll sleep well, sir," said his host, as he ushered him in. "It's a poor place for the like of you, but it's the best we've got."

"It's all I could wish," said Willard, who couldn't have told for the life of him, whether it was sumptuously furnished or otherwise. And then returning his host a good-night, he threw himself on the bed, and strove to forget in sleep the dull, heavy aching of his head and heart.

"A queer chap, that!" said the old man, as he slowly plodded his way down stairs. "Looks as if he had seen trouble lately. Well, this world is full of trouble; nothing but trouble for rich and poor alike, and always will be to the end, I do believe." And with this hopeful and encouraging view of the world in general, he opened the door and entered the bosom of his family.

"Well, now, Jonathan," exclaimed his spouse, in a voice more remarkable for shrillness than sweetness, "I wonders at your harboring every highwayman and sulky stranger you don't know nothing about, in this way. How do you know we won't get our throats cut in cold blood afore morning, with that there dark-looking, silent man in the house? How do you know but he's a robber, or suthin'?"

"I don't believe he's a robber," said Jonathan, quietly, sitting down at the table; "he don't look like that. Seems more like as if he had some heavy trouble or other a-weighing on his mind. Anyway, you wouldn't have me turn away a tired critter from the door, would you, old woman?"

"Well, if he wasn't so suspicious-looking," grumbled the old woman; "but, for to go and sit there all the evening, and never speak one word, is a _leetle_ too much."

"People don't talk when they are in trouble, I tell you!" retorted her spouse. "And now I think on't, perhaps he's some friend or other of that poor young girl that's going to be hung. I'm sure, if he is, it's enough to make him silent. Fill my cup, Susan."

"He's real good-looking, anyway," remarked one of the girls, "with the loveliest of black eyes."

"And the sweetest curling hair!" said the other.

"And the whitest teeth--did you notice?" added the first.

"No; but I saw his hands; they _was_ white as a lady's!" chimed in the second.

"I don't believe he's a bad man, either; he don't look like it," said the first.

"I declare to massy! if Sary ain't gone and fell in love with him!" exclaimed Johnny, with a chuckle.

"I hain't neither!" said "Sary," angrily, with reddening cheeks.

"Well, there, don't get quarreling about him!" broke in the mother. "The man's going away to-morrow morning; that's one blessing!"

But neither that morrow, nor the next, nor the next did Willard Drummond go; for when morning came, they found him tossing in the delirium of a fever. In dire alarm, a doctor was sent for, who said he was ill from over-excitement of some kind, and was threatened with brain fever; but that with proper care it might be warded off.

Querulous as the good lady of the house might seem outwardly, at heart she was kind and motherly; and all her sympathies were aroused for the sick young stranger. She listened in wonder and pity to his wild ravings, from which she could easily gather that he was in some way connected with the dire event that was occupying every tongue--how, she could not tell. That he was of a station far superior to their own, they also could see; and with the most tender and unceasing care they watched over him night and day.

But with all their kind nursing, three weeks elapsed before he was able to leave his bed, and another passed before he was strong enough to walk about.

Of Sibyl and the rest he had heard nothing during all this time. All exciting topics they had been forbidden by the doctor to speak of before him; and that, as the one exciting theme of every tongue, in particular. In fact had they been willing, they had very little to tell, for they had few visitors from the outer world to their quiet little cottage.

One evening, as still weak and languid, he sat by the window, watching the sun sink red and fiery behind a dense black cloud, and thinking bitterly how, by the impetuous violence of his own headstrong passions, his own life had been similarly clouded, the lad Johnny came in, with wide-opened eyes and mouth, all aglow with some wonderful news.

"Well, Johnny, boy, what is it?" said his father, who sat, as Willard had first seen him, serenely smoking his pipe.

"Oh, father! I've just seen old Toller, from Westport," said the boy, excitedly.

"Well, lad, what's the news from there?" inquired his father.

Willard, too, looked around with a start.

"Why, he says people are crowding to it now, from every place; that every house is full of people come to see the woman hung."

Willard Drummond's face grew livid, and his brain reeled at the words.

"He says she was raving crazy for awhile, and that delayed it so long; but the doctor's brought her to, and now the execution's going to take place day after to-morrow."

His mother's warning glance toward Willard came too late. With the look of a madman, he rushed from the house. A horse, the boy had been riding, stood saddled at the gate. He sprang on his back, and striking him a furious blow, dashed off under the first moment's fierce excitement, as he had done before, unheeding, uncaring whither he went.

He saw not, heeded not the coming storm; but one idea filled heart and brain--that of escaping, of flying far away, of never again beholding the scene of so many horrors.

Night was at hand, bearing in its dark, lowering face the storm that all day had been threatening. An oppressive stillness, a burning heat filled the air, and the old trees creaked, groaned, and tossed their long, weird arms with a dreary moaning noise, as though in pain. A hot, gusty wind lifted at intervals the heavy, dark hair off his burning brow, but without cooling it. It rustled the dry leaves till they whirled in a shower around him; but he heeded it not; he would hardly have heeded the wildest hurricane in that moment.

He had reached the forest, and now his course becoming from necessity less rapid, he could look around him and note the change of weather. By the last sickly light of the dying day, he saw a tempest was at hand, and he hailed it with a sort of mad exultation, to think that nature, convulsed by the storm, would be so much more in unison with the storm raging within his own breast.

He gave the frowning face of the sky but one momentary glance, for another and far more terrible sight was ever before his agonized eyes--it was the form, the beautiful form of his worshiped Sibyl, swinging between heaven and earth, convulsed in the agony of that horrible death; exposed to the gaze, to the shouts and derision of the mob; her lovely face darkened and convulsed until death would mercifully put an end to her tortures.

The awful vision seemed driving him mad. With something like the shriek of a maniac, he struck the animal he bestrode a furious blow to drive him on. The horse bounded madly on for a few paces; but at that moment a vivid sheet of lightning blazed across their path, and he suddenly stopped, reared himself almost upright, and with a snort of fear turned and fled. Faint from recent illness, Willard lost his seat, and was hurled, wounded and bleeding, to the earth.

And now, alone, wounded, and helpless in the vast old woods, the storm was upon him in its might.

It is said that, in the moment that elapses before some sudden and terrible death, all the events of our lives pass with the rapidity of lightning through our minds. So was it now with Willard Drummond. As he lay prostrate, bleeding, and helpless, all the great wrongs he had done, all he had made others suffer, rose before him with a bitterness exceeding that of death. Through him Christie was murdered; through him Sibyl was now to die a felon's ignominious death.

The storm was each moment increasing; and it howled, and shrieked, and tore through the trees, as though it had risen in vengeance against him. He thought of that _other night_ of storm and tempest, on which his loving, much-wronged child wife had perished by the steel of the assassin. He thought of Sibyl, alone and doomed, waiting for death in her prison-cell. And then, with startling suddenness, flashed across his mind the strange vision that, years before, he had seen and scoffed at, in a far off land. One by one, three visions had been realized; and now only one--the death on the scaffold--was to come.

The night; the storm; the forest; the wounded man, all were here; and now was death to come, and end all this mortal strife, and close forever the dark drama of his life.

While these thoughts were yet passing through his mind, a sound smote his ear that startled him from the deadly stupor into which he was fast falling. It was no crash of storm, this; no sound of wind and rain among the trees; but the sound of human footsteps flying wildly through the storm. He strove to raise himself and cry out; but his voice was lost in the wild uproar around; and he was about to fall back in despair, when the fugitive from the storm struck against him, and fell over him on the ground.

The shock of the sudden concussion nearly stunned Willard; but the person who had fallen, uttering a sharp ejaculation, was up again in an instant, bending over him.

By the light of the rapid flashes of lightning, he beheld a woman with dark, flowing hair, and wild, maniac eyes--the same startling vision he had twice before seen in Campbell's Isle.

With a shriek that pierced high above the storm, she sprang up, and sped away through the woods with the speed of an arrow shot from a bow.

The unexpected sight of this unearthly-looking visitant was too much for nature, in his present exhausted state, to bear; and falling heavily back, the dark night of insensibility closed around him.