‘Well, time passed on, and one day I was out with my gun for some game and happened to be very near the place where Randolph and Kelmond used to meet, and coming up to it suddenly, I found the Indian girl upon the spot, and crying as I had never seen an Indian before, for they’re a stern race, you know, messmates; well, I could not but offer her all the consolation I knew how to do, and, you see, she knew where I came from, and so asked me about Randolph’s health, and the like, but never reproached him for all his deception, not a word. ‘Twould have made you blubber right out to have seen that poor, brokenhearted girl asking after him who had betrayed her, with all the warmth of an affection that could never die. There’s something queer, messmates, about a woman’s love; I never sailed much in those latitudes, but I’ve seen those that have, and I can say, on my own account, that I never could find soundings myself, throw the lead as often as I would. So it was with this beautiful Indian girl; her heart was still the same towards him who had rendered her cruise for life one of perfect misery. ‘Well, from that hour the wild flower of the mountains withered and faded like a broken reed, until the suspicion of her sister Komeoke was aroused, and she at length told her all her misery. She heard it without a word of revenge, and did all her kind heart could suggest, to make her dear sister as comfortable as she might. Well, a few days from the time she told her secret to her sister, the poor, beautiful, but broken-hearted girl, like a ship without a compass, messmates, lost her mind, they say; at any rate she climbed to the very highest part of Holyoke, where a long, sharp rock extends out from the hill-side, and looks off towards the valley, and threw herself off from the immense height upon the rocks and stones below. Her father found her body the next day all mangled and torn to pieces. Her sister, too, looked upon her dead body, and then uttered the deep, horrid curse of her tribe upon him who had caused this ruin. She did not shed a single tear, so a red warrior told me afterwards, but her spirit was awake--she was aroused and the Indian blood was at work in her veins. ‘Before another sun had gone down, messmates, Randolph fell near the door of the house where he stopped, pierced to the heart by a poisoned arrow, and a few moments after, the sister of Kelmond sought his side and told him, why that arrow was sent--told him that he would appear before the Indian’s God with Kelmond, that he would be banished into the dirty, muggy swamps that evil ones inhabit, while the good were roving the happy hunting grounds of the blessed. Well, messmates, Randolph died of that fatal wound, and I, for one, am free to say he did not deserve to live. The sister was revenged, and Komeoke became the wife of a great brave.