A few hours longer, and the flesh was all torn from his frame, and only a ghostly, grinning skeleton was left of the once proud and vicious Louis Durant; and yet fresh beasts arriving upon the scene, disappointed in their anticipated feast, howled a dismal requiem over his bones, which were left, without sepulture, to bleach in the winds and storms of heaven! Such was the terrible end of the _villain_, while the _victims_ of his hate and malice, against whom he had plotted so often and so fiendishly, were happy in the enjoyment of life's best blessings; and thus the story points its own moral. THE END