then is nought to that now. For it has reached the rock,
turned it, and open-mouthed, springs at him like a panther.

In vain he endeavours to avoid it, and still keep under cover. While
shunning its teeth, he has also to think of Clancy's gun.

He cannot guard against both, if either. For the dog has caught hold of
his right leg, and fixed its fangs in the flesh. He tries to beat it
off, striking with the butt of his gun. To no purpose now. For his
horse, excited by the attack, and madly prancing, has parted from the
rock, exposing him to the aim of the pursuer, who has, meanwhile, rushed
up within rifle range.

Clancy sees his advantage, and raises his gun, quick as for the shooting
of a snipe. The crack comes; and, simultaneous with it, Richard Darke
is seen to drop out of his saddle, and fall face foremost on the plain--
his horse, with a wild neigh, bolting away from him.

The fallen man makes no attempt to rise, nor movement of any kind, save
a convulsive tremor through his frame; the last throe of parting life,
which precedes the settled stillness of death. For surely is he dead.

Clancy, dismounting, advances towards the spot; hastily, to hinder the
dog from tearing him, which the enraged animal seems determined to do.
Chiding it off, he bends over the prostrate body, which he perceives has
ceased to breathe. A sort of curiosity, some impulse irresistible,
prompts him to look for the place where his bullet struck. In the
heart, as he can see by the red stream still flowing forth!

"Just where he hit me! After all, not strange--no coincidence; I aimed
at him there."

For a time he stands gazing down at the dead man's face. Silently,
without taunt or recrimination. On his own there is no sign of savage
triumph, no fiendish exultation. Far from his thoughts to insult, or
outrage the dead. Justice has had requital, and vengeance been
appeased. It is neither his rival in love, nor his mortal enemy, who
now lies at his feet; but a breathless body, a lump of senseless clay,
all the passions late inspiring it, good and bad, gone to be balanced
elsewhere.

As he stands regarding Darke's features, in their death pallor showing
livid by the moon's mystic light, a cast of sadness comes over his own,
and he says in subdued soliloquy:--

"Painful to think I have taken a man's life--even his! I wish it could
have been otherwise. It could not--I was compelled to it. And surely
God will forgive me, f