d teaching me to disobey and deceive
him! She told me not to lie; and she lied all day to him, on my account,
and to screen me from his anger. She taught me the catechism, to say on
Sunday, while during the week she schooled me in almost every possible
form of ingenuity to violate all its precepts. She bribed me to do my
duty, and hence my duty could only be done under the stimulating promise
of a reward; and, without the reward, I went counter to the duty. She
taught me that God was superior to all, and that he required obedience
to certain laws; yet, as she hourly violated those laws herself in my
behalf, I was taught to regard myself as far superior to him! Had she
not done all this, I had not been here and thus: I had been what now I
dare not think on. It is all her work. The greatest enemy my life has
ever known has been my mother!"

"This is a horrible thought, captain; yet I can not but think it true."

"It is true! I have analyzed my own history, and the causes of my
character and fortunes now, and I charge it all upon her. From one
influence I have traced another, and another, until I have the sweeping
amount of twenty years of crime and sorrow, and a life of hate, and
probably a death of ignominy--all owing to the first ten years of my
infant education, where the only teacher that I knew was the woman who
gave me birth!--But this concerns not you. In my calm mood, Dillon, you
have the fruit of my reason: to abide its dictate, I should fly with
you; but I suffer from my mother's teachings even in this. My passions,
my pride, my fierce hope--the creature of a maddening passion--will not
let me fly; and I stay, though I stay alone, with a throat bare for the
knife of the butcher, or the halter of the hangman. I will not fly!"

"And I will stay with you. I can dare something, too, captain; and you
shall not say, when the worst comes to the worst, that Tom Dillon was
the man to back out. I will not go either, and, whatever is the chance,
you shall not be alone."

Rivers, for a moment, seemed touched by the devotion, of his follower,
and was silent for a brief interval; but suddenly the expression of his
eye was changed, and he spoke briefly and sternly:--

"You shall not stay with me, sir! What! am I so low as this, that I may
not be permitted to be alone when I will? Will my subordinates fly in my
face, and presume to disobey my commands? Go, Dillon--have I not said
that you _must_ fly--that I no longer need y