and yet bewildered, he sets off at full speed, through back lanes, over fields, passing in his course the astonished guardmen.  He looks neither to the right nor the left, but speeds on toward the grove.  Now he reaches the bridge that crosses the millpond, pauses for breath, then proceeds on.  Suddenly a light from the villa Anna occupies flashes out.  He has crossed the bridge, bounds over the little hedge-grown avenue, through the garden, and in another minute stands before her, a pistol pointed at her breast, and all the terrible passions of an enraged fiend darkening his countenance.  Her implorings for mercy bring an old servant rushing into the room, the report of a pistol rings out upon the still air, shriek after shriek follows, mingled with piercing moans, and death-struggles.  “Ha, ha!” says the avenger, looking on with a sardonic smile upon his face, and a curl of hate upon his lip, “I have taken the life to which I gave my own-yes, I have taken it-I have taken it!” And she writhes her body, and sets her eyes fixedly upon him, as he hastens out of the room.

“Quick! quick!” he says to himself.  “There, then!  I am pursued!” He recrosses the millpond over another bridge, and in his confusion turns a short angle into a lane leading to the city.  The yelping of dogs, the deep, dull tramp of hoofs, the echoing of voices, the ominous baying and scenting of blood-hounds-all break upon his ear in one terrible chaos.  Not a moment is to be lost.  The sight at the villa will attract the attention of his pursuers, and give him time to make a distance!  The thought of what he has done, and the terrible death that awaits him, crowds upon his mind, and rises up before him like a fierce monster of retribution.  He rushes at full speed down the lane, vaults across a field into the main road, only to find his pursuers close upon him.  The patrol along the streets have caught the alarm, which he finds spreading with lightning-speed.  The clank of side-arms, the scenting and baying of the hounds, coming louder and louder, nearer and nearer, warns him of the approaching danger.  A gate at the head of a wharf stands open, the hounds are fast gaining upon him, a few jumps more and they will have him fast in their ferocious grasp.  He rushes through the gate, down the wharf, the tumultuous cry of his pursuers striking terror into his very heart.  Another instant and the hounds are at his feet, he stands on the capsill at the end, gives one wild, despairing look into the abyss beneath—­“I die revenged,” he shouts, discharges a pistol into his breast, and with one wild plunge, is buried forever in the water beneath.  The dark stream of an unhappy life has run out.  Upon whom does the responsibility of this terrible closing rest?  In the words of Thomson, the avenger left behind him only “Gaunt Beggary, and Scorn, with many hell-hounds more.”

When the gray dawn of morning streamed in through the windows of the little villa, and upon the parlor table, that had so often been adorned with caskets and fresh-plucked flowers, there, in their stead, lay the lifeless form of the unhappy Anna, her features pale as marble, but beautiful even in death.  There, rolled in a mystic shroud, calm as a sleeper in repose, she lay, watched over by two faithful slaves.