I was absent for three days and nights. I started warmly on the death-chase, and never was one more keenly followed up. I seemed insensible to fatigue--heat, hunger, thirst were disregarded. Of five-and-twenty vigorous axe-men, accustomed from infancy to forest-life, by the second evening eighteen were worn out, and unable to proceed; and yet I and Dominique--and he with a wounded arm--pursued the traces of the murderers with unabated ardour. I ate not, slept not, but drank brandy and shed blood. Seven of the eight had already perished; but that eighth one lived; and without that ruffian’s life, my vengeance was incomplete. On we went once more, and the human hunt continued. We found the wretch, at last, stretched beneath a tree--worn down, impassive, unresisting. I drew a pistol from my belt--looked at the doomed one for a moment. Three had fallen, resisting, by my hand: as many more by Dominique’s. “No,” I said, as I replaced the weapon; “desire the slaves to string that felon up; thou and I, my friend, cannot stoop to be his executioners!” I returned--witnessed the obsequies of my wife. That scene was too much for one already excited by maddening influences; my senses wandered--and memory deserts me. Along, long gloomy epoch follows--ten years; long, long years! Mine was a melancholy state of being; for they neither could call me mad, nor yet pronounce me sane. My child was placed in a neighbouring convent: she grew--was happy; and became, as the nuns averred, the favourite _pensionnaire_ of a dozen. I saw her seldom; for when I did, the striking likeness between her and her angel-mother for days unsettled reason. Meanwhile, worldly events went prosperously; and, Heaven knows, without the slightest wish to increase possessions already more than enough to defray every desire and want, still wealth flowed in upon me; and, in the list of rich Chilian proprietors, my name stood high. There was one period of the year when my reason was invariably disturbed; the anniversary of Camilla’s murder. The whole of the events attendant on that frightful tragedy came back to memory; and the scene was vivid to the imagination as if it were really being again enacted. All was before my eyes--darkness and fire; slaughter; the death chase; the funeral; and then insanity closed the fearful drama. The domestics were always prepared for this awful season; and Dominique remained with me like my shadow.