“Although my faith in the innocence of Ellen was as strong as in the angels of heaven, still he plainly believed all he avouched of her guilt; and still, as I clung to the one redeeming thought that nothing on earth could have tempted a spirit like hers astray, still something would whisper that she might have changed toward _him_, or have been made the victim of some infernal conspiracy, with woman’s malice, perhaps, at the bottom of the scheme. Strange stories in the history of the Cathertons, before they came over from England—which I had heard years before—flashed across my mind, and I felt sure—I knew, it must have been the circumstances growing out of my unfortunate duel—which, no doubt, he had twisted to the furtherance of his own purposes, which had induced her to marry him when her heart was elsewhere. “I had little time to think of this at the moment, as you may suppose; for the sight I had seen that night, and the story of the second mate’s, with the frightful thought of what she must have endured to the end, was enough to craze my brain, until Catherton, breaking out into a laugh more like a fiend’s than a man’s, and halting directly in front of me, said—‘You look wild, Mr. Miller—perhaps you, too, have trusted woman. I tell you,’ he hissed through his teeth, as I arose and leaned against the mast, as it were, from pure weariness—staring at him in a blank way, while the blood seemed congealing to ice in my veins, ‘I tell you she was false—false as the whole sex—false as the hollowest heart of them all—though the oaths I had sworn, and the plans of revenge we had laid, kept me still.’ “‘No! no!’ reiterated he, laughing again in his horrid way, ‘by that time I had learned something of endurance; and, as I had no children—for I was spared that misery—it was not worth my while to thrust my neck in a halter for the sake of a profligate woman. Ha! ha! I thought better of it—it was a sweeter and safer revenge to have her here in the ship, while she knew that I was cruising the seas to beggar her paramour—for, fool-like, his money went at the gaming-table faster than it came, and I had persuaded him, in conjunction with the mate, to invest his all in the purchase of this ship—to see her, amid the healthful breezes of ocean, dying a death to which the direst of Eastern tortures are mercy—’ “‘Devil!’ I broke out at last, striking him full in the face with one hand, as I snatched a cutlass from the rack with the other, sending the iron scabbard, in my fury, straight across the cabin against the door of a state-room; he reeled a pace or two, laying his hands upon a half-pike at the mast. ‘Fool!’ I exclaimed, seeing that he still hesitated, ‘come on—I am S——!’