Page:Randall Parrish--My Lady of the South.djvu/245

WE FIND COLONEL DONALD it be the wearer of that awful face? I was convinced the latter was a woman, while the body yonder was unquestionably that of a man. Yet the impression of that countenance haunted me, seemed forever associated with the horror of this hole in which we skulked, and I dragged O'Brien forward, dreading lest I had to gaze upon it again. She might have been attired in men's clothes; and it seemed to me then, I would rather look on any other human countenance, death-stamped, than on her wildly distorted visage. I cannot convey in words the intense horror with which I recalled the ghastly outline of that face; the very recurring memory left me nerveless, and I comprehended why the lad held back, half struggling to break away.

Yet I dragged him forward with me, until the light fell full upon the huddled-up bunch of humanity, until I thrust the lantern down close against the wall, and got a glimpse beneath the hat brim. Already from the massive figure I suspected the truth; now my eyes confirmed it—the man lying there was Colonel Donald. I saw the wound in his throat, the blood-stains on the stones. He had been murdered, stricken exactly as those others, pounced upon in the dark without the slightest warning, the deadly knife driven home by a cunning hand. It seemed to me I would choke from the very horror of it; my hand tore open the collar of my shirt; my eyes stared down at his white face, and then nervously about into the black shadows.

O'Brien was the first to recover himself, for he had experienced less of the night's mystery, and the inert body [ 231 ]