ses of thousands upon his
head? Something of the kind, or something equally powerful, must have
been at work within him; for his features ever and anon, by their
mournful contortions--if we may be allowed the phrase--gave visible
tokens of one in deep agony of mind. It would be no pleasant task to
analyze and lay bare the secret workings of so dark a spirit, even had
we power to do it; and so we will leave his thoughts, whether good or
evil, to himself and his God.

By his side, and within two feet of the renegade, lay extended the
beautiful form of Ella Barnwell--with nothing but a blanket and her own
garments between her and the earth--with none but a similar covering
over her--with her head resting upon a stone, and apparently asleep. We
say apparently asleep; but the drowsy son of Erebus and Nox had not yet
closed her eyelids in slumber; for there were thoughts in her breast
more potent than all his persuasive arts of forgetfulness, or those
of his prime minister, Morpheus. Was she thinking of her own hard
fate--away there in that lonely forest--with not a friend nigh that
could render her assistance--with no hope of escape from the awful doom
to which she was hastening? Or was she thinking of him, for whom her
heart yearned with all the thousand, undefined, indescribable sympathies
of affection?--of him who so lately had been her companion?--for
the heart of love measures duration, not by the cold mathematical
calculation of minutes and hours, and days and weeks, and months and
years, but by events and feelings; and the acquaintance of weeks may
seem the friend of years, and the acquaintance of years be almost
forgotten in weeks;--was she thinking of him, we say--of Algernon? who,
even in misery, had been torn from her side, had said perchance his last
trembling farewell, and gone to suffer a death at which humanity must
shudder! Ay, all these thoughts, and a thousand others, were rushing
wildly through her feverish brain. She thought of her own fate--of
his--of her relations--pictured out in her imagination the terrible doom
of each--and her tender heart became wrung to the most excruciating
point of agony.

By the side of Ella, was her adopted mother--buried in that troubled
sleep which great fatigue sends to the body, even when the mind is
ill at ease, filling it with startling visions--and around the fire,
as we said before, lay the dusky forms of the savages, lost to all
consciousness of the outer world. The