alculating head, De Haldimar, where any secret villainy, any thing to
promote your own selfish ends, was to be gained by it; but your
calculation seems now, methinks, at fault."

Colonel de Haldimar looked at him enquiringly.

"You have STILL a son left," pursued the prisoner with the same
recklessness of manner, and in a tone denoting allusion to him who was
no more, that caused an universal shudder throughout the ranks. "He is
in the hands of the Ottawa Indians, and I am the friend of their great
chief, inferior only in power among the tribe to himself. Think you
that he will see me hanged up like a dog, and fail to avenge my
disgraceful death?"

"Ha! presumptuous renegade, is this the deep game you have in view?
Hope you then to stipulate for the preservation of a life every way
forfeited to the offended justice of your country? Dare you to cherish
the belief, that, after the horrible threats so often denounced by you,
you will again be let loose upon a career of crime and blood?"

"None of your cant, de Haldimar, as I once observed to you before,"
coolly retorted Wacousta, with bitter sarcasm. "Consult your own heart,
and ask if its catalogue of crime be not far greater than my own: yet I
ask not my life. I would but have the manner of my fate altered, and
fain would die the death of the soldier I WAS before you rendered me
the wretch I AM. Methinks the boon is not so great, if the restoration
of your son be the price."

"Do you mean, then," eagerly returned the governor, "that if the mere
mode of your death be changed, my son shall be restored?"

"I do," was the calm reply.

"What pledge have we of the fact? What faith can we repose in the word
of a fiend, whose brutal vengeance has already sacrificed the gentlest
life that ever animated human clay?" Here the emotion of the governor
almost choked, his utterance, and considerable agitation and murmuring
were manifested in the ranks.

"Gentle, said you?" replied the prisoner, musingly; "then did he
resemble his mother, whom I loved, even as his brother resembles you
whom I have had so much reason to hate. Had I known the boy to be what
you describe, I might have felt some touch of pity even while I delayed
not to strike his death blow; but the false moonlight deceived me, and
the detested name of De Haldimar, pronounced by the lips of my nephew's
wife--that wife whom your cold-blooded severity had widowed and driven
mad--was in itself sufficient to ensure hi