"_You! You!_ It is you. And she has pleaded on her knees for mercy to such a thing as you. Oh! the infamy of it, the infamy for such as she is to plead to such, as you!" The prostrate Indians raised their heads in astonishment at her words of scorn--doubtless it was incredible to them that any mortal should so dare to address their great medicine man and wonder-worker--while he, with his glittering eyes fixed on his followers, bade them at once begone and leave him alone with their captives. Alone, he said, so that he might awe these women into submission. And they, obedient to him, withdrew at his command, though still with the look of astonishment on their faces that any should have ventured to so speak to him and still live. "Yes," he said when they had retired; and, unwrapping the silken folds from his face so that in a moment, all painted and tattooed though he was, that most unutterable villain, Roderick St. Amande, stood revealed before us, "yes, it is I. Returned at last to Pomfret Manor to repay in full all the treatment I received, and to give to all and every one in the village of Pomfret a just requital of their kindness in driving me forth, wounded and bleeding, to the savages who proved more kind than they. God! if I had had my will the whole place should have been put to slaughter long ago, and there should have been no reprieve lasting for five years." I have said that the Indians who had captured us had left Mary and me free and untouched, so that, with the exception that there was no chance of escape, we were under no restraint. And now that freedom was seized upon by Mary, who, becoming wrought upon by the fiendish cruelty of this creature's words, seized up a pistol lying on the spinet by her side and snapped it at him--but vainly, as, since its last discharge, it had not been reloaded. "You dog," she said as she did so, "you base dog. It can be but a righteous act to slay such as you." But, when she found that the weapon was harmless, she flung it to the floor with violence while she exclaimed that even heaven seemed against us now. But to this Mr. Kinchella raised a protest, telling her that even in the troubles which now surrounded us it was impossible for any Christian to believe such a thing, and pointing out to her--with what I have ever since thought was unconscious scorn--that, since heaven had not seen fit even to desert one so evil as the creature before us, it would be impossible for it to do so to those who, righteously and God-fearingly, worshipped it and its ruler.