One gasp, a
convulsive effort, and there was silence,--she had lost her voice.
The beast made a sluggish movement,--stretched and fawned like one
awaking,--then, as if he would have yet more of the enchantment,
stirred her slightly with his muzzle. As he did so, a sidelong hint of
the man standing below with the raised gun smote him; he sprung round
furiously, and, seizing his prey, was about to leap into some unknown
airy den of the topmost branches now waving to the slow dawn. The late
moon had rounded through the sky so that her gleam at last fell full
upon the bough with fairy frosting; the wintry morning light did not
yet penetrate the gloom. The woman, suspended in mid-air an instant,
cast only one agonized glance beneath,--but across and through it, ere
the lids could fall, shot a withering sheet of flame,--a rifle-crack,
half heard, was lost in the terrible yell of desperation that bounded
after it and filled her ears with savage echoes, and in the wide arc of
some eternal descent she was falling;--but the beast fell under her. I
think that the moment following must have been too sacred for us, and
perhaps the three have no special interest again till they issue from
the shadows of the wilderness upon the white hills that skirt their
home.
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