ar you say this. I could not now believe you capable of
such barbarities."

"And yet, if they were true in all their horrid details, they would fall
far short of the cruelties that have been dealt out by the savage foe to
the inhabitants of this defenceless frontier. If you knew the history
of this land for the last ten years; its massacres and its murders; its
tears and its burnings; its spoliations; whole provinces depopulated;
villages given to the flames; men butchered on their own hearths; women,
beautiful women, carried into captivity by the desert robber! Oh, God!
and I too have shared wrongs that will acquit me in your eyes, perhaps
in the eyes of Heaven!"

The speaker buried his face in his hands, and leant forward upon the
table. He was evidently suffering from some painful recollection.
After a moment he resumed--"I would have you listen to a short history
of my life." I signified my assent; and after filling and drinking
another glass of wine, he proceeded.

"I am not a Frenchman, as men suppose. I am a Creole, a native of New
Orleans. My parents were refugees from Saint Domingo, where, after the
black revolution, the bulk of their fortune was confiscated by the
bloody Christophe.

"I was educated for a civil engineer; and, in this capacity, I was
brought out to the mines of Mexico, by the owner of one of them, who
knew my father. I was young at the time, and I spent several years
employed in the mines of Zacatecas and San Luis Potosi.

"I had saved some money out of my pay, and I began to think of opening
upon my own account.

"Rumours had long been current that rich veins of gold existed upon the
Gila and its tributaries. The washings had been seen and gathered in
these rivers; and the mother of gold, the milky quartz rock, cropped out
everywhere in the desert mountains of this wild region.

"I started for this country with a select party; and, after traversing
it for weeks, in the Mimbres mountains, near the head waters of the
Gila, I found the precious ore in its bed. I established a mine, and in
five years was a rich man.

"I remembered the companion of my youth, the gentle, the beautiful
cousin who had shared my confidence, and inspired me with my first
passion. With me it was first and last; it was not, as is often the
case under similar circumstances, a transient thing. Through all my
wanderings I had remembered and loved her. Had she been as true to me?

"I determined to assu