to a deed like this? Waldegrave was pure from all offence. His piety was
rapturous. His benevolence was a stranger to remissness or torpor. All
who came within the sphere of his influence experienced and acknowledged
his benign activity. His friends were few, because his habits were timid
and reserved; but the existence of an enemy was impossible.

I recalled the incidents of our last interview, my importunities that he
should postpone his ill-omened journey till the morning, his
inexplicable obstinacy, his resolution to set out on foot during a dark
and tempestuous night, and the horrible disaster that befell him.

The first intimation I received of this misfortune, the insanity of
vengeance and grief into which I was hurried, my fruitless searches for
the author of this guilt, my midnight wanderings and reveries beneath
the shade of that fatal elm, were revived and reacted. I heard the
discharge of the pistol, I witnessed the alarm of Inglefield, I heard
his calls to his servants, and saw them issue forth with lights and
hasten to the spot whence the sound had seemed to proceed. I beheld my
friend, stretched upon the earth, ghastly with a mortal wound, alone,
with no traces of the slayer visible, no tokens by which his place of
refuge might be sought, the motives of his enmity or his instruments of
mischief might be detected.

I hung over the dying youth, whose insensibility forbade him to
recognise his friend, or unfold the cause of his destruction. I
accompanied his remains to the grave; I tended the sacred spot where he
lay; I once more exercised my penetration and my zeal in pursuit of his
assassin. Once more my meditations and exertions were doomed to be
disappointed.