precaution. My hand was on my pistol with a grasp of premeditated
revenge, when a shrill, sharp, solitary cry broke on my ear.

"No sound followed: all was silence. I was just approaching towards the
close of the descent, when a horse without its rider passed me. The
shower had ceased, and the moon broke from the cloud some minutes before;
by its light I recognized the horse rode by Tyrrell; perhaps, I thought,
it has thrown its master, and my victim will now be utterly in my power.
I pushed hastily forward in spite of the hill, not yet wholly passed. I
came to a spot of singular desolation: it was a broad patch of waste
land, a pool of water was on the right, and a remarkable and withered
tree hung over it. I looked round, but saw nothing of life stirring. A
dark and imperfectly developed object lay by the side of the pond; I
pressed forward: merciful God! my enemy had escaped my hand, and lay in
the stillness of death before me!"

"What!" I exclaimed, interrupting Glanville, for I could contain myself
no longer, "it was not by you then that Tyrrell fell?" With these words,
I grasped his hand; and, excited as I had been by my painful and
wrought-up interest in his recital, I burst into tears of gratitude and
joy. Reginald Glanville was innocent: Ellen was not the sister of an
assassin!

After a short pause, Glanville continued:

"I gazed upon the upward and distorted face, in a deep and sickening
silence; an awe, dark and undefined, crept over my heart: I stood beneath
the solemn and sacred heavens, and felt that the hand of God was upon me;
that a mysterious and fearful edict had gone forth; that my headlong and
unholy wrath had, in the very midst of its fury, been checked, as if but