e effect of this unexpected revelation upon the young Virginian was as
if an adder had suddenly fastened upon his bosom. It woke a suspicion,
involving indeed an improbability such as his better reason revolted at,
but full of pain and terror. But wild and incredible as it seemed, it
received a kind of confirmation from what Nathan added.

"The rifle-guns, the beads, and the cloth," he said, "that were
distributed after the battle,--does thee think they were plunder taken
from the young Kentuckians they had vanquished? Friend, these things were
a price with which the white man in the red shawl paid the assassin
villains for taking thee prisoner,--thee and thee kinswoman. His
hirelings were vagabonds of all the neighbouring tribes, Shawnees,
Wyandots, Delawares, and Piankeshaws, as I noted well when I crept among
them; and old Wenonga is the greatest vagabond of all, having long since
been degraded by his tribe for bad luck, drunkenness, and other follies,
natural to an Injun. My own idea is, that that white man thirsted for
thee blood, having given thee up to the Piankeshaws, who, thee says, had
lost one of their men in the battle; for which thee would certainly have
been burned alive at their village: but what was his design in
captivating thee poor kinswoman that thee calls Edith, truly I cannot
divine, not knowing much of thee history."

"You shall hear it," said Roland, with hoarse accents,--"at least so much
of it as may enable you to confirm or disprove your suspicions. There is
indeed one man whom I have always esteemed my enemy, the enemy also of
Edith,--a knave capable of any extremity, yet never could I have dreamed
of a villany so daring, so transcendent as this!"

So saying, Roland, smothering his agitation as he could, proceeded to
acquaint his rude friend, now necessarily his confidant, with so much of
his history as related to Braxley, his late uncle's confidential agent
and executor;--a man whom Roland's revelations to the gallant and
inquisitive Colonel Bruce, and still more, perhaps, his conversations
with Edith in the wood, may have introduced sufficiently to the reader's
acquaintance. But of Braxley, burning with a hatred he no longer chose to
subdue, the feeling greatly exasperated, also, by the suspicion Nathan's
hints had infused into his mind, he now spoke without restraint; and
assuredly, if one might have judged by the bitterness of his invectives,
the darkness of the colours with which he tra