of triumphant extasy: "He feels me now," I cried, "and shall, again and

again!"--I passed but one day in confinement; in the evening I was

liberated, as I was told, by the order of the Earl himself. This news

precipitated me from my self-raised pinnacle of honour. He despises me, I

thought; but he shall learn that I despise him, and hold in equal contempt

his punishments and his clemency. On the second night after my release, I

was again taken by the gamekeepers--again imprisoned, and again released;

and again, such was my pertinacity, did the fourth night find me in the

forbidden park. The gamekeepers were more enraged than their lord by my

obstinacy. They had received orders that if I were again taken, I should be

brought to the Earl; and his lenity made them expect a conclusion which

they considered ill befitting my crime. One of them, who had been from the

first the leader among those who had seized me, resolved to satisfy his own

resentment, before he made me over to the higher powers.

The late setting of the moon, and the extreme caution I was obliged to use

in this my third expedition, consumed so much time, that something like a

qualm of fear came over me when I perceived dark night yield to twilight. I

crept along by the fern, on my hands and knees, seeking the shadowy coverts

of the underwood, while the birds awoke with unwelcome song above, and the

fresh morning wind, playing among the boughs, made me suspect a footfall at

each turn. My heart beat quick as I approached the palings; my hand was on

one of them, a leap would take me to the other side, when two keepers

sprang from an ambush upon me: one knocked me down, and proceeded to

inflict a severe horse-whipping. I started up--a knife was in my grasp; I

made a plunge at his raised right arm, and inflicted a deep, wide wound in

The Last Man