When Charles the First was King by J.S. Fletcher

I entered upon the final stages of my homeward journey with very different feelings from those which had filled me when I left London. When I rode away from Master Goodfellow's house I thought of little else than the gladness of being at home once more with the dear familiar faces of my friends around me. But when I left Peterborough I had no thought of them, or of the joys of reaching home again. All I wanted and all I thought of, was to come at Rupert Watson and settle my account with him. My heart was filled with impatience because of him. Every mile seemed the length of three miles, and never until then had I dealt so unsparingly with my horse. I pushed forward at a quicker rate than when I had ridden southwards; and though I was forced to stay one night at Newark, I got no benefit from it, for I spent the hours in walking my chamber floor, and was in the saddle again long before the people of the inn were stirring.

Until that time, indeed, I had never known what it was to be so completely filled with the passion of revenge that there was no room for any other feeling or thought in my heart. So resolved was I to do justice to my father's murderer that I put everything else out of my mind. I thought of the sorrow brought upon me and mine by that foul deed. I recalled every incident of the horrible scene on the snow-covered highway, until the picture became present to my eyes, and would not be shut out. I saw my father laid rigid and lifeless in the snow, myself bending over him in an agony of fear and grief, while the horses stood by with their heads bent towards us as if they shared in my sorrow. I saw my mother standing in the open doorway with the warm firelight glowing behind her, and remembered the awful woe that stole like a shadow across her face as she heard the news of her husband's murder. These matters filled my mind to the exclusion of every other thought as I rode homewards, and above them rose a fierce determination to meet Rupert Watson and pay him the debt I had owed him for all those years.