Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/78

70 Then, as the ravenous yell of baffled force and infuriated passion shook the echoes of the hills, the report of the rifles rang through the night with sullen murderous peal, and Erceldoune fell as one dead.

All was still in the heart of the forest. The snowy summits of the Carpathians gleamed white in the moonlight; the cry of the wild dog or the growl of the wild boar, the screech of the owl or the rush of the hat's wing, alone broke the silence; above the dark silent earth the skies were cloudless, and studded with countless stars, whose radiance glistened here and there through dense black shadow, on moss, and boulders, and cavernous gorges, and torrents plunging downward through the night. In the narrow channel of the defile, with gnarled pines above and waters roaring in their pent-up bed below, there lay the stiffened corpse of the mare, and across her body, bathed in her blood and in his own, with his head fallen back, and his face turned upward as the starlight fell upon it, was stretched the Queen's Messenger, where they had left him for dead.

The night had passed on and the hours stolen apace, till the stars had grown large in the heavens,