I did not answer, but breaking into a run, I rushed by her and up the slope to where that ghastly figure lay beneath the tree. As I stood beside him, he stirred and opened his bloodshot eyes, wearily looking up at me--it was DeNortier, and wounded unto death, it required no leech to see that. Beside him lay the dead body of the apothecary, Marsden, a look of terror awful to behold upon his pale face. One stiff hand clutched some leaves, the other lay outstretched above his head, as though in despair. He had died like a trapped rat; the ghastly look upon his face was more significant than words, for it showed the agony and despair of the last moment, when the freebooter had struck him down. There still quivered in his lifeless frame the keen blade of a sword, which had been thrust through his body and deep into the ground, pinning him down to writhe and die like a butterfly transfixed by a needle. The Count DeNortier looked at me a moment with his glassy eyes, and then drew back from me. "Art come to torment me, pale shade?" he said. "Away! A few moments and I will be even as thou art." "I am no shade," I answered, "but a man of flesh and blood like thyself." "Who is it, cloaked and hooded, that stands gray and silent by thy side?" he continued in the same low voice, as though he had not heard me. "It looks even as one whom I have known in the long ago. Speak, dim spectre! Who art thou?" I looked behind me, there was no one there save the wondering Indian girl. With a shout that resounded through the forest, he dragged himself to a sitting position, horror stamped upon every feature of his face. "It is Sir Samuel Morton!" he shouted in an unearthly voice. "Back! I slew thee, but it was in fair fight. Why comest thou here to torment me? Go! I said," and he fell back trembling upon the ground. "'Tis no one, Count," I said soothingly. "Be calm--It is only the creation of thy fevered brain that thou seest." But with straight, unseeing eyes, already fixed in death, he stared past me. "'Tis ever thus," he groaned, "ever I see rise around me the shadowy faces of those whom I have slain. They flock about with leering looks and outstretched fingers, taunting me as I lie thus. If there be a hell, as the lying priests would have us believe, it would be torture enough to listen through countless ages to their gibes, and to see about me their staring faces," and he lay back exhausted, with panting tongue. "Water," he moaned--"would that I had but one drink of water." I cast my steel cap towards the motionless girl. "Bring him some water, Winona," I said. She bounded away to a little brook that glimmered through the trees near by. "Dunraven," he screamed, rising again, "thou shalt not have her! I would rather that this Sir Thomas should win than thou; he is at least a man, whilst thou art a creeping serpent. I would rather see the maid cold in death, than to be the bride of such as thou."