Page:Tales of the Wild and the Wonderful (1825).djvu/184

 The shot fell, and, in the same moment, Catherine sunk, with a loud scream, to the earth. “Silly girl,” exclaimed the commissary, lifting her up: but a stream of blood flowed over her face, her forehead was shattered, for the ball of the rifle was lodged in the wound. William turned, on hearing loud shrieks behind him, and beheld his Catherine pale, weltering in her blood, and by her side the soldier of the forest, who, with a fiendish laugh of scorn, pointed to his dying victim, and cried aloud to William, “Sixty hit, three miss!”

“Accursed fiend!” shrieked the wretched youth, striking at the detested form with his sword, “hast thou thus deceived me?” His agony permitted no further expression, for he sunk senseless to the earth by the side of the victim bride. The commissary and priest in vain endeavoured to console the childless heart-broken parents. The mother had scarcely laid the prophetic garland of death upon the bosom of the bridal corpse, when her sorrow and life expired with her last-shed tear: the solitary father soon followed her, and the miserable William closed his life in the mad-house.