"Perhaps so; still I think it my duty to give it you, whether you like it or not. Here it is, and you can act as you please. The man who wishes to attain a high position among his people must be careful not to substitute private or personal interests for the public interests intrusted to him. You are too intelligent to fail to understand me. Trust to me. Farewell for the present." And after discharging this Parthian arrow, the chief went off, apparently not noticing the Stag's confusion. The latter stood for a moment as if stunned by this clear-sighted apostrophe. "¡Voto a brios!" he muttered in Spanish, "Have I been so maladroit as to let these crafty men read my secret thoughts? Oh, it is impossible! Still--nonsense," he added, as he haughtily raised his head, and looked defiantly around him, "what do I care after all? If I succeed, each will acknowledge me to be right. Does not success justify the most desperate enterprises, and this is far from being one." These reflections seemed to restore him all the confidence and audacity which his father's remarks and White Crow's malice had momentarily shaken, and he walked with a calm look and careless demeanour toward the two chiefs, who were mounting at the moment, as he wished to take leave of them before starting. The compliments were short and cold on both sides, for these three men were eager to separate. Brought up in a different medium, and in ideas diametrically opposed, the Stag and his two comrades could not understand each other, and the sachems even involuntarily felt an antipathy for their young colleague. Running Water was right in the remonstrance which he addressed to his son. Paternal love on one side, on the other his hatred of the Mexicans, rendered him clear-sighted. A man, however firm his character may be, does not adopt with impunity the customs and habits of men in a more advanced stage of civilization than himself, and pass his childhood and youth in the midst of the comfort and luxury ignored in savage life, which, while freeing man from physical apprehensions, enlarge his ideas, by giving him the leisure to think and live, no longer through the senses, but through the heart. The Stag, destined by his father to serve as the instrument of the revenge which he wished to take on Don Aníbal de Saldibar and his family, had been so well trained by Running Water, that his entrance to the hacienda met with no difficulty. The boy had begun by playing a long studied part, then, by degrees, without knowing how or why it took place, the fiction was converted into a reality, and the Comanche grew to regard almost with terror the moment when he would be compelled to return to the independent life of the prairies, and resume the nomadic existence of his tribe. This repugnance for the customs of his fathers emanated neither from any gratitude he felt for Don Aníbal's constant kindness to him, nor from friendship he felt for those who brought him up.