ruck him senseless to the floor at a single blow with the flat of my
sabre, which in my extreme fury I had unsheathed. Instead, however, of
profiting by the opportunity thus afforded to execute my threat, a
feeling of disgust and contempt came over me, for the woman, whose
inconstancy had been the cause of my committing myself in this
ungentlemanly manner; and bestowing deep but silent curses on her head,
I rushed from the house in a state of frenzy. How often since have I
regretted that I had not pursued my first impulse, and borne her to
some wild, where, forgetting one by whose beauty of person her eye
alone had been seduced, her heart might have returned to its allegiance
to him who had first awakened the sympathies of her soul, and would
have loved her with a love blending the fiercest fires of the eagle
with the gentlest devotedness of the dove. But destiny had differently
ordained.

"Did my injuries end here?" pursued the dark warrior, as his eye
kindled with rage. "No: for weeks I was insensible to any thing but the
dreadful shock my soul had sustained. A heavy stupor weighed me down,
and for a period it was supposed my reason was overthrown: no such
mercy was reserved for me. The regiment had quitted the Highlands, and
were now stationary in ----, whither I had accompanied it in arrest.
The restoration of my faculties was the signal for new persecutions.
Scarcely had the medical officers reported me fit to sustain the
ordeal, when a court-martial was assembled to try me on a variety of
charges. Who was my prosecutor? Listen, Clara," and he shook her
violently by the arm. "He who had robbed me of all that gave value to
life, and incentive to honour,--he who, under the guise of friendship,
had stolen into the Eden of my love, and left it barren of affection.
In a word, yon detested governor, to whose inhuman cruelty even the son
of my brother has, by some strange fatality of coincidence, so recently
fallen a second sacrifice. Curses, curses on him," he pursued, with
frightful vehemence, half rising as he spoke, and holding forth his
right arm in a menacing attitude; "but the hour of retribution is at
hand, and revenge, the exclusive passion of the gods, shall at length
be mine. In no other country in the world--under no other circumstances
than the present--could I have so secured it.

"What were the charges preferred against me?" he continued, with a
violence that almost petrified the unhappy girl. "Hear them,