my feet
lay Lorna, trying to tell me some last message out of her faithful eyes.
I lifted her up, and petted her, and coaxed her, but it was no good; the
only sign of life remaining was a spirt of bright red blood.

Some men know what things befall them in the supreme time of their
life--far above the time of death--but to me comes back as a hazy dream,
without any knowledge in it, what I did, or felt, or thought, with my
wife's arms flagging, flagging, around my neck, as I raised her up, and
softly put them there. She sighed a long sigh on my breast, for her last
farewell to life, and then she grew so cold, and cold, that I asked the
time of year.

It was Whit-Tuesday, and the lilacs all in blossom; and why I thought
of the time of year, with the young death in my arms, God or His angels,
may decide, having so strangely given us. Enough that so I did, and
looked; and our white lilacs were beautiful. Then I laid my wife in my
mother's arms, and begging that no one would make a noise, went forth
for my revenge.

Of course, I knew who had done it. There was but one man in the
world, or at any rate, in our part of it, who could have done such a
thing--such a thing. I use no harsher word about it, while I leaped upon
our best horse, with bridle but no saddle, and set the head of Kickums
towards the course now pointed out to me. Who showed me the course, I
cannot tell. I only know that I took it. And the men fell back before
me.

Weapon of no sort had I. Unarmed, and wondering at my strange attire
(with a bridal vest, wrought by our Annie, and red with the blood of the
bride), I went forth just to find out this; whether in this world there
be or be not God of justice.

With my vicious horse at a furious speed, I came upon Black Barrow Down,
directed by some shout of men, which seemed to me but a whisper. And
there, about a furlong before me, rode a man on a great black horse, and
I knew that the man was Carver Doone.

"Your life or mine," I said to myself; "as the will of God may be. But
we two live not upon this earth, one more hour together."

I knew the strength of this great man; and I knew that he was armed with
a gun--if he had time to load again, after shooting my Lorna--or at any
rate with pistols, and a horseman's sword as well. Nevertheless, I had
no more doubt of killing the man before me than a cook has of spitting a
headless fowl.

Sometimes seeing no ground beneath me, and sometimes heeding every lea