t
he smashed his rum-keg, and agreed to go with us."

"Well, well," said Doe's associate, "this is idle talk. We have won the
victory, and must enjoy it. I must see the prize."

"What good can come of it?" demanded Doe, moodily: "the gal's half dead
and whole crazy,--or so Telie says. And as for your gitting any good-will
out of her, cuss me if I believe it. And Telie says--"

"That Telie will spoil all! I told you to keep the girl away from her."

"Well, and didn't I act accordin'? I told her I'd murder her, if she went
near her agin--a full-blooded, rale-grit rascal to talk so to my own
daughter, an't I? But I should like to know where's the good of keeping
the gal from her, since it's all she has for comfort?"

"And that is the very reason she must be kept away," said the stranger,
with a look malignly expressive of self-approving cunning: "there must be
no hope, no thought of security, no consciousness of sympathy, to make me
more trouble than I have had already. She must know where she is, and
what she is, a prisoner among wild savages: a little fright, a little
despair, and the work is over. You understand me, eh? There is a way of
bringing the devil himself to terms; and as for a woman, she is not much
more unmanageable. One week of terrors, real and imagined, does the work;
and then, my jolly Jack, you have won your wages."

"And I have desarved 'em," said Doe, striking his fist upon the table
with violence; "for I have made myself jist the d----dest rascal that was
ever made of a white man. Lying, and cheating, and perjuring, and
murdering--it's nothing better nor murder, that of giving up the younker
that never did harm to me or mine, to the Piankeshaws,--for they'll burn
him, they will, d--n 'em! there's no two ways about it.--There's what
I've done for you; and if you were to give me had the plunder, I reckon
'twould do no more than indamnify me for my rascality. And so, here's the
end on't;--you've made me a rascal, and you shall pay for it."

"It is the only thing the world ever does pay for," said the stranger,
with edifying coolness; "and so, don't be afflicted. To be a rascal is to
be a man of sense,--provided you are a rascal in a sensible way,--that
is, a profitable one."

"Ay," said Doe, "that's the doctrine you have been preaching ever since I
knowed you; and _you_ have made a fortun' by it. But as for me, though
I've toed the track after your own leading, I'm jist as poor as ever, and
ten t