ay add that before I had been three months I had
also mastered my wife. When she found that I would not submit to her
caresses, she was very indignant and very violent, but I immediately
knocked her down, and beat her unmercifully. This brought her to her
senses, and after that I treated her as my slave with great rigour,
and as she was a notorious scold, the Indians liked me all the better
for it.

You may think that this was not fair treatment towards a woman who had
saved my life; but she only saved it for her own purposes, and would
have worn my ears, as well as my companion's, if I had not killed her
husband. The fact is, I had no alternative; I must have either treated
her kindly and submitted to her nauseous endearments, or have kept her
at a respectful distance by severity, and I hardly need say that I
preferred the latter. So far as her choice of a husband was concerned,
she made a bad one, for she received nothing but blows and bad usage.
I had one day driven my wife out of the wigwam in consequence of her
presuming to "talk too much," as the Indian said, when the interpreter
told me that one of the chiefs was willing that I should marry his
daughter, polygamy being one of their customs.

I was very much annoyed at this, for I knew the young girl very well:
she was very graceful and very pretty; and I felt that my fidelity to
Amy would be in great danger if the marriage was to take place; and if
proposed, I dared not refuse so great a distinction.

I replied that I was fortunate, but that I feared my present wife
would make her very unhappy, as she wanted to be the chief woman of
the wigwam, and when I was away I could not tell what the old woman
might do to her, and the conversation was dropped.

This little Indian had, before this, shown me as much favour as an
Indian girl ever ventures to show, sufficient, at all events, to
satisfy me that I was not disagreeable to her, and what the
interpreter had said made me very uncomfortable. However, I consoled
myself with the recollection that if I were compelled to marry this
girl, it would be an involuntary infidelity on my part, and on that
account might well be excused; for the hope of again rejoining Amy
never left me at any time.

One day I went out in search of deer, and was led away from my
companions after a buck which I had wounded and attempted to overtake.
They saw me in chase of my quarry, and left me in pursuit. I followed
for several hours, conti