Page:Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations (Volume 3).djvu/199

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The Fatal Marksman.
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legs; but the airy train, and the carriage soared into the air with a whistling sound, round and round the circle, and vanished in a hurricane, which moved not a leaf of the trees. Some time elapsed before William recovered from his cousternation. However, he compelled his trembling hands to keep firm, and cast a few bullets. At that moment, a well known church-clock at a distance, began to strike. At first the sound was a sound of comfort, connecting, as with the tones of some friendly voice, the human world with the dismal circle in which he stood, that else seemed cut off from it as by an impassable gulph: but the clock struck twice, thrice,—here he shuddered at the rapid flight of time, for his work was not a third part advanced, then it struck a fourth time. He was appalled; every limb seemed palsied; and the mould slipped out of his nerveless hand. With the calmness of despair, he listened to the clock, until it completed the full hour of twelve; the knell then vibrated on the air, lingered, and died away. To sport with the solemn hour of midnight, appeared too bold an