“Degraded, insulted, outraged on the very hearth of my father's house!” cried he, aloud, as he wrung his hands in agony, and gave his passion vent. Again he pressed forward, and at last arrived at that part of the glen, where the road seems escarped between the two mountains, which rise several hundred feet, like walls, on either side. Here he paused, and after examining the spot for some seconds, he muttered to himself, “He has no choice here, but stand or turn!” and so saying, he drew from the breast of his coat two pistols, examined the priming of each, and then replaced them. The prospect of speedy revenge seemed to have calmed his vindictive spirit, for now he continued to walk backwards and forwards, at a slow pace, like a sentinel on his post, pausing occasionally to listen if a horse's hoofs could be heard upon the road, and then resuming his walk once more. A rustling sound in the brushwood above his head once startled him, but the granite cliffs that overhung the road prevented his seeing from what it proceeded, and his heart was now bent on a very different object than the pursuit of the deer. At that moment, the proudest of the herd might have grazed in safety, within pistol-shot of him, and he had not deigned to notice it. Thus passed an hour--a second--and a third succeeded--and, already, the dull shadows of approaching night were falling--yet, no one came. Tortured with strange conjectures, Mark saw the day waning, and yet no sight nor sound of him he looked for. Let not poets speak of the ardent longing of a lover's heart, as in throbbing eagerness he waits for her, whose smile is life and hope, and heaven. Compared with the mad impatience of him who thirsts for vengeance, his passion is but sluggish apathy. It is the bad, that ever calls forth the sternest energies of human nature. It is in crime, that men transcend the common attributes of mankind. Here was one, now, who would have given his right hand beneath the axe, for but one brief moment of vengeance, and have deemed years of suffering cheaply bought, for the mere presence of his enemy before him.
“He must have guessed my meaning when I left the room;” was the taunting expression he now uttered, as his unsated anger took the shape of an insolent depreciation of his adversary. “An Irishman would not need a broader hint!”