1827.] The Murderer's 'Leap. 490 



for the craven-lay which threatens death for the attempt? my vengeance 

 shall not be stayed with a song. It shall be so : the weight of despair is 

 surely not greater than the weight of guilt." And so saying, he stepped 

 backward to the proper distance, and began to prepare himself for the 

 adventure. This he did, in the first place/ by striking his blade into the 

 ground, clasping his hands, raising up his face towards heaven, and repeat- 

 ing a short prayer for success ; but, although he stood thus in an attitude 

 of Christian devotion, he might have seemed to resemble more one of the 

 ancient Alani, whose only object of worship, as Ammianus Marcellinus 

 informs us. was a naked sword stuck in the earth. He then drew forth 

 his good steel again, and, planting his feet firmly in their proper posture, 

 was about to spring forward to the perilous undertaking. The outlaw, who 

 had apparently watched his movements, and even heard his words, raised 

 himself gradually from his reclining posture first on his knees, and then, 

 as his enemy's preparations seemed to be nearly completed, upon his feet. 

 " Stop !" he cried ; " witness that I have, at least, not sought this. The 

 event be on your own head ! I confess that I am worn out I am alone 

 and unarmed ; but the visitor w^ho thrusts himself unbidden on me here 

 shall never live to tell what welcome he met with at the Raven's Tower." 

 The reply of the avenger was to wave the bloody handkerchief in the air, 

 which he then placed in his bosom ; and, clearing the intervening space at 

 three rapid bounds, he darted from the side of the mountain. The des- 

 peration that had prompted him to the adventure lent an energy to his 

 limbs which it was believed only one man of that day possessed, and ho 

 alighted on the brink of the rock ; yet so barely was the feat performed, 

 that, had he not seized hold of the outlaw's arm, who struck a furious 

 blow at him as he touched the ground, he could not have preserved his 

 footing even for a single moment. They were both men of more than 

 ordinary strength, and their mutual hate was of more than ordinary fierce- 

 ness ; and, had that meeting taken place upon the mountain's side, or had 

 the assailant even gained a firm footing upon the rock, it is more than pro- 

 bable that the evening's sun would have gone down upon the struggle. But 

 here was no contest of warriors in the field no flashing of the sword no 

 spilling of blood no cries of triumph or of vengeance ! On the one part, 

 it was an instinctive, silent clinging to the only object of support within 

 reach and, on the other, a desperate but hopeless resistance against a 

 power which seemed, with supernatural force, to be gradually dragging him 

 to perdition. They stood thus for some moments upon the smooth and 

 sloping edge of the precipice, their frames convulsed and their sinews 

 cracking with the intensity of the struggle, and yet their motion towards the 

 brink scarcely perceptible. They looked into each other's faces, and saw 

 in the damp and ghastly features the image of death. " 1 warned thee !" 

 at last broke, in choked accents, from the white lips of the outlaw as their 

 fate became certain, and a glare of rage and terror illumined for an instant 

 his despair. The bridegroom replied by bending down his head, with a 

 last effort, and tearing with his teeth from his bosom the bloody signal of 

 vengeance, which he held up in the destroyer's face. The next moment he 

 fell backward into the abyss, still clinging with a death-clasp to his 

 enemy, and they commenced their headlong descent; and so firmly did he 

 retain his hold, that, although the projecting points of the rock spattered 

 their brains upon the wall, and mangled their bodies out of the form of 

 men, yet they arrived, still hand in hand, in one mass of blood at the 

 bottom of the cell whence the pollution of human guilt and misery was 

 instantaneously swept out by the indignant stream. L.R. 



