"I know not," said Roderick St. Amande, "who this fellow is, though by his garb he is a minister; but amongst the tribe to which I now belong the Christian minister, as he is termed, is ever regarded as the worst of white men, and as the one, above all, who makes the best bargain for robbing the native. The one who teaches him to drink deeper than any other white man teaches him, and who has less respect for their squaws' fidelity and their daughters' honour.[3] So, good sir, when we have safely conveyed you to our home in the mountains, I will promise you that you will have full need of the intercession of that heaven of which you speak ere you can escape torture and death." "I shall doubtless have strength granted to endure both," the other replied calmly. "And I will, at least, undertake one thing, which is that no cowardice shall prompt me to embrace the life of a savage and a heathen to save my skin." The villain scowled at him as he spoke these bitter words, but answered him no more; then, glancing down at some of the prostrate bodies lying at his feet, he exclaimed, "I trust all these carrion are still alive. They will be wanted for the rejoicings. Let's see for myself," while, kicking O'Rourke's body with his foot, he turned it over until it was face upwards. Then, for a moment, even he seemed appalled, recoiling from it--yet an instant afterwards bending down to gaze into the features of the unhappy adventurer. "What!" he exclaimed, "what, O'Rourke here? O'Rourke, the clumsy fool who, when he should have shipped off my beggarly cousin shipped me in his place? O'Rourke. O'Rourke! Oh! if he but lives, how I will repay him for his folly. What a dainty dish he shall make for the torturers! How his fat body shall feed the flames! For, even though his mistake has made me a greater man than ever I could have been at home--ay, one before whom these credulous red fools bow as to a god--there is much suffering to be atoned for; the awful suffering of the passage in the _Dove_; your father's insults, my dearest Joice, and his blows; and also much else. But for that latter, you, my dear one, will repay me when you are mine and mine alone, with no rival in my heart but our haughty Mary, who shall be my dark love as you shall be my fair one." As the wretch spoke, however, there were two things happened that he saw not, in spite of the all-seeing eyes with which he was credited by the tribe he dwelt with. He did not see that, as he turned to insult Mary and me, O'Rourke first opened his own eyes and gazed on him and then raised his head to stare at him; he did not see that, from where the window had been, the Indian chief heard all he said, and stared in amazement and looked strangely at him as he spoke of the "credulous red fools."