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Events hurry on. As the passions and complicated movements
of the drama develope themselves, the task of the
chronicler becomes more and more difficult. We must proceed,
however, to narrate, as clearly as possible, what followed
the final outburst of the young man's fiery passion—
rejected finally, as we have seen, by the object of his love.

Night drew on, cold and stormy. It was one of those
evenings which succeed late autumn days, when the sun
seems to set in blood, and the vast clouds reposing on the
far horizon are tinged with that lurid light which resembles
the glare of a great conflagration. The wind rose, and
moaned, and died away, and came again, ever becoming
chiller and more mournful. The moon rose like a great
wheel of fire rolled up the sky, over which dark clouds
drifted, driven by the wind; and the almost leafless forests
seemed to be murmuring to themselves, and whispering
some mysterious secret. The tall, gloomy pines waved like
solemn giants, in the fitful moonlight, and the oaks ground
their boughs together, or parted with their last rattling
leaves, in the stormy gusts, which ever and anon swept over
them, clattering their dry, hard branches.

In the town, every living thing soon housed itself from
the chill wind and the gloomy, fitfully-illuminated night—
and not the cold, cheerless air alone drove them to their
firesides. Those were the times when men believed in
witchcraft and every species of diablerie; and many persons
in the town could make oath that they had seen horrible,
uncouth figures, celebrating awful and mysterious rites
on the wild, lonely common, near; where the pine bushes
waved like deformed spectres, throwing long shadows over
the dangerous ground. It was a night for fiends to be
abroad in, holding their wild revels beneath the frosty light
of the great solemn moon; and none cared to brave it,
when a good fire and a cup of foaming ale awaited them.
They looked round fearfully when the gust moaned by the
gables; and told tales which dealt in terrible mysteries—in

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hidden treasure—in fiends, and black dogs guarding it—and
how the witches, who had tormented honest Christians, had
been burned, not long before, for an example to all evil
doers. It was a night to believe in such things, and they
trembled at every sound — at the very grating of the
branches against the window.

All that day Beatrice had been in a state of agitation
and nervous fear. The interview with her father on the
night before, had succeeded the trying ordeal of the ball,
and then the interview with Mr. Effingham had crowned all.
That interview had affected her cruelly—never had she seen
the young man so torn by passion, so completely overwhelmed
with emotion—never had she known him to utter such despairing
cries of agony and torture. It had made her suffer
deeply, and shocked her nervous system dreadfully. In
addition, she had not slept for more than forty-eight hours,
and nothing so prostrates the nerves as this. We cannot
wonder, therefore, that the young girl was exhausted in mind
and body, by these various and complicated moral and physical
trials—subject to a nervous trepidation, which made
her start at every noise.

She went through the duties of the day, walking as in a
dream, with fixed eyes, and heaving bosom; her agitation
was so striking, that every body observed it, and questioned
her about it. She made no reply to these questions—she
seemed not to have heard them. Her mind was laboring
with its burden of fear and agitation.

As the night drew on, she felt an indefinable dread.
Seated in her room, alone, she started at every gust which
sobbed around the inn, and trembled at every noise. The
moonlight now streamed through the window like a flood of
dark, fiery gold, then disappeared, swallowed up in the
gloomy and threatening clouds, which swept over the sky
toward the far, freezing ocean.

As the night passed on, and midnight approached, she fell
into a sort of trance of thought. With a dreamy eye she
ran over her whole life, since she had arrived in Virginia—
she thought of those persecutions, of the adventure on the
river, of her rescue, of that noble face, of those persecutions
again, of the ball, of the strange revelation which had so
changed her life.

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As she thought of that strange conjunction of circumstances,
her eye fell upon the volume of Shakespeare, open,
from habit, on her lap. She read:

The words seemed to apply strangely to her own case.
Truly, that deed had been blown in every eye, by an accident
which was plainly from heaven. With dreamy eyes,
she read on, and came to the passage where the usurper sees
the air-drawn dagger, and feels the cold sweat of horror
bathe his brow, as he attempts to clutch it. She saw him,
with his stealthy tread, gliding slowly, the murderous weapon
in his hand, toward the apartment where the murder was to
be committed—she heard his low breathing—saw his fiery
eyes—almost thought that his awful invocation to the firm
earth not to hear his stealthy steps, was really uttered—that
she saw the tiger stealing toward his victim with deadly
caution. The scene was so clear in her marvellously vivid
imagination, that she trembled; and when a bird flew against
the window, started up in an agony of fright.

She sat down again, endeavoring to calm herself; the fire
was burning fitfully, and she tried to make it brighter. The
last sticks, however, were burning out, and the trembling
blue flame licked, and struggled, and clung to the whitening
embers, and went out. She did not observe it, however;
she was again buried in thought; and those thoughts fled to
the far southern land, enveloped in such mysterious and
dreamy interest. It seemed to her that the life she now
embraced, with a drowsy and unsteady eye, must have been
in another world—a strange, far world, which she could
never go to any more forever!

Gradually her eyes closed, her head drooped on her
breast, then she would start up, trembling at some noise;
and then her head would droop again, the wild stormy gust
would lull her, and the fitful weird light of the great, solemn
moon, would envelope her gentle Madonna-like head in
a flood of glory. At last, all her thoughts flowed into each

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other, merged their outlines, lost themselves in dreams, and
overcome by exhaustion, the young girl slept; her head
drooping on one shoulder, her long dusky lashes lying on
her cheeks, her hair waving in profuse curls round the still
agitated countenance.

She had a strange dream. She thought, as the second
or third hour after midnight struck, or rather murmured
through the silent inn—she thought that her window opened,
and a man, enveloped in a cloak, stepped into the room
through the opening. The dream was so real, that she
thought she felt a gust of chill air blow on her. Then, this
man approached her slowly, enveloped as before, in his long
cloak and wide drooping hat; took her languid form in his
strong arms, raising her without effort;—and passing through
the window, bore her, she knew not how, to the ground.
A horse stood waiting, and the man mounted, holding her
still in his arms. Then they set off like the wind; and
shaken by the quick movement, uttering a scream, as the
chill air raised by the horse's gallop struck her person, she
awoke, and found her dream a reality! What she had regarded
as the mere conjuration of her excited fancy, was a
terrible fact! what she had considered a mere freak of the
imagination, was real, as the gloomy night through which
the furious and neighing animal darted, obedient to the spur
of his desperate rider! She was in the arms of a man, who
wrapped her in his cloak with one hand, while he clasped
her waist with the other—the bridle lying on the neck of his
flying animal. In five minutes they had left the town and
entered the gloomy forest.