As he emerged from the cabin, he heard a shot echo through the forest, and almost immediately a man rushed into his arms, bleeding profusely from a gaping wound in the temple. The night was moonless and dark, but in the feeble and uncertain light Espérance recognized Lorenzo.
"My sister--my sister--poor Annunziata!" the young peasant gasped, painfully. "Your friend--abducted--gone! Oh! my God!" and he sank to the ground an unconscious mass, quivering in the final agonies of dissolution.
Espérance was horror-stricken. Annunziata abducted by Giovanni! He could draw no other conclusion from the young peasant's broken exclamations! Lorenzo slain, too, and doubtlessly also by the impetuous Viscount's hand! Oh! it was horrible!--it was almost beyond belief! He bent over Lorenzo's prostrate form, straightened it out and felt in the region of the heart; there was no beat; it was as he had divined--Annunziata's manly and generous brother was dead--the victim of a cowardly, treacherous assassin--and that assassin!--oh! he could not think of it and retain his faith in men!
Espérance left Lorenzo's corpse lying upon the sward, and, pistol in hand, started forward to go to Annunziata's aid, to rescue her from her dastardly abductor, if it lay within his power to do so. He reached the forest and plunged into its sombre depths. Scarcely had he gone twenty feet when a man carrying a flaming torch rushed wildly by him, in his shirt sleeves, hatless, his short, thick gray hair standing almost erect upon his head. In the sudden flash of light his haggard eyes blazed like those of a maniac. In his left hand he held a long, keen-bladed knife. He glanced neither to the right nor the left, but kept straight on, as if he were a ferocious bloodhound in pursuit of human prey. Espérance came to an abrupt pause, and stared with wide-open eyes at the startling apparition. It was old Pasquale Solara! The son of Monte-Cristo shuddered as he thought that the father, with all his Italian ferocity thoroughly aroused, was in pursuit of the man who had abducted his daughter and murdered his son. In that event the Viscount's death was sure, for he could not escape the vengeance of the distracted and remorseless shepherd! Should he raise his voice and warn him? No, a thousand times no! Giovanni deserved death, and did the furious old man inflict it, he would be only advancing the just punishment of the outraged law!
Quickly resolving to follow in the footsteps of Pasquale Solara, Espérance dashed on, utterly regardless of the bushes and briars that impeded his progress and tore great rents in his garments. Soon excited voices reached him, then the noise of a violent struggle. He pushed rapidly forward, intent upon reaching the scene of conflict, where he did not doubt the hapless Annunziata would be found. Soon he indistinctly saw two men engaged in a hand to hand strife. One was evidently Pasquale Solara, for a torch was smouldering on the ground half-extinguished by the damp moss, and the young man caught an occasional flash of a knife such as the shepherd had carried when he passed him, but beyond these circumstances all was supposition, for the identity of the contending men could not be made out in the obscurity.