He answered quite steadily, though in a low tone, as if reverencing the presence of the dead.

“There is no hope.  It is useless to send for a surgeon.  Hardy, you will take all the men whom you can collect and scour the country.  Send to the sbirri immediately; they will go with you.  There must be traces of the murderer.  Frank, will you see that—­he—­is brought carefully to the house?  I will”—­he stopped, and drew a long, hard breath—­“I will go and break it to Isabel.”  His hand, that happened to touch mine as he spoke, was damp and icy cold.

In his life Guy Livingstone had done and dared more than most men, but he never ventured on any thing so thoroughly brave, and valiant, and strong-hearted as when he left me, without another word, on that errand.  For myself, though weak both in body and nerve, I swear I would rather have gone up the breach at Badajoz with the forlorn hope, than up that bank with the certainty before me of what awaited him.

Trees overhanging, and high walls on either side, and the change from the bright moonlight, made it so dark just as you approached the inn that Guy scarcely saw a white figure crouching down a few paces from the door till he was close upon it.

He threw his arm round Isabel Forrester’s waist before she could pass him.  Half his task was done; there was nothing to break to her now.  She understood all when she saw him come back alone.

For a few moments, there they stood in the dark, no word passing between them; the only sound was her quick panting, as she struggled in his grasp, battling to get free.

“Isabel,” he said, at last, gravely, “come in; I must speak to you.”

No answer still, but the same desperate struggle to get loose.  There was a savage, supernatural power in her writhings that taxed even his gigantic strength to hold her; as it was, he yielded unconsciously to her impulse so as to recede some paces till they issued out into the moonlight.  He could scarcely recognize her features; they were all working and contorted, the lips especially horribly drawn back and tense.  She bent her head down at last, and made her teeth meet in the arm that detained her.

Guy never flinched nor stirred, but spoke again in the same slow, deliberate tone.

“Isabel, come in.  I swear that you shall see him when it is safe.  They are bringing him back now.”

She ceased struggling and stood straight up, shaking all over, straining her eyes forward to the turning in the path where the torches began to gleam.

“Is he not dead, then?” she said, in a strange, harsh voice, utterly unlike her own.  Her cousin did not try to delude her; all the stern outline of his face softening in an intense pity told her enough.

Such a scream—­weird, long drawn out, and unearthly, such as we fancy the Banchee’s—­as that which pierced through my very marrow (though I stood three hundred yards away, as if it had been uttered close at my ear), I trust I shall never hear again.