The next instant two pistols flashed, and Laud lay stretched upon the sand. He had first fired at Barry and missed him, and the next moment, in self-defence, Barry was compelled to fire in return. The ball, which was intended only to have disabled his arm, passed through his heart and killed him on the spot. So ended the career of a man who, only in the few latter days of his life, seemed steadily resolved to act fairly by the woman who had devoted her life to him, and to follow some honourable occupation in a foreign land. Poor Susan's words at last proved true: "Margaret you will never marry William Laud." The bodies of Laud and Margaret were both carried by the sailors to the preventive-service boat, and laid upon the men's cloaks at the bottom of it. After a while, Margaret began to revive, and her awakening dream was, that she was on board the smuggler's boat, which was coming to meet them. But the men in that boat, observing the fearful odds against them, had only rested on their oars to see the fatal result which took place, and then turned back and steered for their own vessel. Margaret looked wildly round her as the moonlight shone upon the sailors. She whispered, "Laud! Laud!" She saw something lying in a line with herself upon the same cloaks, but could not distinguish anything but a sailor's dress: she heard a voice at the helm which was familiar to her; she recognized it to be Barry's; she lifted her head, and saw the banks of the river on both sides of the water. The truth seemed to flash upon her, for she fell backwards again, fainted away, and became insensible. She and her lover were conveyed to the Ship Inn at Orford. The sailors who carried her, sensible of the devoted heart of the poor girl, seemed oppressed with heaviness, and could not refrain addressing one another, in their own peculiar style, upon the bad job of that night. Margaret became too soon and too fully acquainted with her situation. She shed tears of the deepest agony; her mind was distracted, and without consolation. She did not speak to any one; but between sobs, and groans, and lamentations upon her loss, she seemed the most melancholy picture of human woe. By what she had heard from some of the pitying sailors around her, she understood that it was young Edward Barry who had shot her lover. When he came into the room where she was seated in an arm-chair, with her head resting in an agony upon her hand, he went up to speak to her. She lifted up her hands, turned her head aside, and exclaimed-- "Begone, wretch! Did you not voluntarily promise you would never hurt him?" "And so I would, Margaret, if he would have permitted me to do so. But he would not. He first fired at me, and then I returned it; but only with the intention of disarming him."