on, not merely for those who had
been most rancorous in their enmity, but for every thing that wore the
uniform, from the commanding officer down to the meanest private. Every
blow that I dealt, every life that I sacrificed, was an insult washed
away from my attainted honour; but him whom I most sought in the melee
I never could reach. At length the corps to which I had attached myself
was repulsed; and I saw, with rage in my heart, that my enemy still
lived to triumph in the fruit of his villainy.

"Although I was grown considerably in stature at this period, and was
otherwise greatly altered in appearance, I had been recognised in the
action by numbers of the regiment; and, indeed, more than once I had,
in the intoxication of my rage, accompanied the blow that slew or
maimed one of my former associates with a declaration of the name of
him who inflicted it. The consequence was, I was denounced as a rebel
and an outlaw, and a price was put upon my head. Accustomed, however,
as I had ever been, to rocks and fastnesses, I had no difficulty in
eluding the vigilance of those who were sent in pursuit of me; and thus
compelled to live wholly apart from my species, I at length learned to
hate them, and to know that man is the only enemy of man upon earth.

"A change now came ever the spirit of my vengeance; for about this
period your mother died. I had never ceased to love, even while I
despised her; and notwithstanding, had she, after her flagrant
inconstancy, thrown herself into my arms, I should have rejected her
with scorn, still I was sensible no other woman could ever supply her
place in my affection. She was, in truth, the only being I had ever
looked upon with fondness; and deeply even as I had been injured by
her, I wept her memory with many a scalding tear. This, however, only
increased my hatred for him who had rioted in her beauty, and
supplanted me in her devotedness. I had the means of learning,
occasionally, all that passed in the regiment; and the same account
that brought me the news of your mother's death also gave me the
intelligence that three children had been the fruit of her union with
De Haldimar. How," pursued Wacousta, with bitter energy, "shall I
express the deep loathing I felt for those children? It seemed to me as
if their existence had stamped a seal of infamy on my own brow; and I
hated them, even in their childhood, as the offspring of an abhorred,
and, as it appeared to me, an unnatural unio