The officer made a final effort at mercy. "Who or what you are, or whence your hatred of my family, I know not," he said; "but surely I have never injured you: wherefore, then, this insatiable thirst for my blood? If you are, indeed, a Christian and a soldier, let your heart be touched with humanity, and procure my restoration to my friends. You once attempted my life in honourable combat, why not wait, then, until a fitting opportunity shall give not a bound and defenceless victim to your steel, but one whose resistance may render him a conquest worthy of your arm?" "What! and be balked of the chance of my just revenge? Hear me, Captain de Haldimar," he pursued, in that low, quick, deep tone that told all the strong excitement of his heart:--"I have, it is true, no particular enmity to yourself, further than that you are a De Haldimar; but hell does not supply a feeling half so bitter as my enmity to your proud father; and months, nay years, have I passed in the hope of such an hour as this. For this have I forsworn my race, and become--what you now behold me--a savage both in garb and character. But this matters not," he continued, fiercely and impatiently, "your doom is sealed; and before another sun has risen, your stern father's gaze shall be blasted with the sight of the mangled carcase of his first born. Ha! ha! ha!" and he laughed low and exultingly; "even now I think I see him withering, if heart so hard can wither, beneath this proof of my undying hate." "Fiend!--monster!--devil!" exclaimed the excited officer, now losing sight of all considerations of prudence in the deep horror inspired by his captor:--"Kill me--torture me--commit any cruelty on me, if such be your savage will; but outrage not humanity by the fulfilment of your last disgusting threat. Suffer not a father's heart to be agonised--a father's eye to be blasted--with a view of the mangled remains of him to whom he has given life." Again the savage rudely pulled the thong that bound his prisoner to his girdle, and removing his tomahawk from his belt, and holding its sullied point close under the eye of the former, exclaimed, as he bent eagerly over him,--