Lorna fell across my knees when I was going to kiss her, as the bridegroom is allowed to do, and encouraged, if he needs it:  a flood of blood came out upon the yellow wood of the altar steps; and at my feet lay Lorna, trying to tell me some last message out of her faithful eyes.  I lifted her up, and petted her, and coaxed her, but it was no good; the only sign of life remaining was a spurt of bright red blood.

Some men know what things befall them in the supreme time of their life—­far above the time of death—­but to me comes back as a hazy dream, without any knowledge in it, what I did, or felt, or thought, with my wife’s arms flagging, flagging, around my neck, as I raised her up, and softly put them there.  She sighed a long sigh on my breast, for her last farewell to life, and then she grew so cold, and cold, that I asked the time of year.

It was now Whit-Tuesday, and the lilacs all in blossom; and why I thought of the time of year, with the young death in my arms, God or his angels may decide, having so strangely given us.  Enough that so I did, and looked, and our white lilacs were beautiful.  Then I laid my wife in my mother’s arms, and begging that no one would make a noise, went forth for my revenge.

Of course I knew who had done it.  There was but one man in the world, or at any rate in our part of it, who could have done such a thing—­such a thing.  I use no harsher word about it, while I leaped upon our best horse, with bridle, but no saddle, and set the head of Kickums toward the course now pointed out to me.  Who showed me the course I cannot tell.  I only know that I took it.  And the men fell back before me.

Weapon of no sort had I. Unarmed, and wondering at my strange attire (with a bridal vest wrought by our Annie, and red with the blood of the bride), I went forth just to find out this—­whether in this world there be or be not a God of justice.

With my vicious horse at a furious speed, I came up Black Barrow Down, directed by some shout of men, which seemed to me but a whisper.  And there, about a furlong before me, rode a man on a great black horse, and I knew that man was Carver Doone.

“Your life, or mine,” I said to myself; “as the will of God may be.  But we two live not upon this earth one more hour together.”

I knew the strength of this great man; and I knew that he was armed with a gun—­if he had time to load again, after shooting my Lorna—­or at any rate with pistols, and a horseman’s sword as well.  Nevertheless, I had no more doubt of killing the man before me than a cook has of spitting a headless fowl.

Sometimes seeing no ground beneath me, and sometimes heeding every leaf, and the crossing of the grass-blades, I followed over the long moor, reckless whether seen or not.  But only once the other man turned round and looked back again, and then I was beside a rock, with a reedy swamp behind me.