But the prayers and supplications of the wretched man were met only by denunciation and scorn. The base nature of Albert felt only his own mortification. His appetite for revenge darkened his vision wholly. He saw neither his policy nor humanity; and the creatures of his will were not permitted to hesitate in carrying out his brutal resolution. Armed with little hickories from the neighboring woods, they awaited but his command, and with its repeated utterance, the lash descended heavily upon the uncovered shoulders of the unhappy woman. With the first stroke, she bounded from the earth with a piercing shriek, at once of entreaty, of agony, and horror. Up to this moment, neither she, nor, indeed, any of the spectators, except Renaud, and possibly Guernache himself, had imagined that Albert would put in execution a purpose so equally impolitic and cruel. But when the blow fell upon the almost fair and naked shoulders of the woman--when her wild, girlish, almost childlike shriek rent the air, then the long suppressed agonies of Guernache broke forth in a passion of fury that looked more like the excess of the madman than the mere ebullition, however intense, of a simply desperate man. He had struggled long at endurance. He had borne, hitherto, without flinching, everything in the shape of penalty which his petty tyrant could fasten upon him--much more, indeed, than the ordinary nature, vexed with frequent injustice, is willing to endure. But, in the fury and agony of that humiliating moment, all restraints of prudence or fear were forgotten, or trampled under foot. He flung himself loose from the men who held him, and darting upon the individual by whom the merciless blow had been struck, he felled him to the earth by a single blow of his Herculean fist. But he was permitted to do no more. In another instant, grappled by a dozen powerful arms, he was borne to the earth, and secured with cords which not only bound his limbs but were drawn so tightly as to cut remorselessly into the flesh. Here he lay, and his agony may be far more easily conceived than described, thus compelled to behold the further tortures of the woman of his heart, without being able to struggle and to die in her defence. His own tortures were forgotten, as he witnessed hers. In vain would his ears have rejected the terrible sound, stroke upon stroke, which testified the continuance of this brutal outrage upon humanity. Without mercy was the punishment bestowed; and, bleeding at every blow from the biting scourge, the wretched innocent was at length tortured out of the garrison. But with that first shriek to which she gave utterance, and which declared rather the mental horror than the bodily pain which she suffered from such a cruel degradation, she ceased any longer to acknowledge her suffering. Oh! very powerful for endurance is the strength of a loving heart! The rest of the punishment she bore with the