down upon your own
head, may the 'curse of God rest upon you in this world and the world to
come!' May evils betide you in this life, every cherished hope be blasted;
every plot of villainy thwarted, and you become a reproach among men, an
outcast and a vagabond on the face of the earth! And when, at last, your
sinful race is run, and your guilty soul has been ushered into that dreaded
eternity you have plucked upon it, may your polluted carcass become the
prey of the carrion-crow and the buzzard, and the wild beasts of the desert
wilderness howl a requiem over your bones! Go now, and meet your doom! Go
with the curse of wretched innocence ever abiding upon you! Go with the
canker-worm of festering corruption ever hanging, like an incubus, upon
your prostituted heart, and may its fangs, charged with burning poison,
pierce the very vitals of existence, till life itself shall become a burden
and a curse! Go!"

And he went, with the awful curse ever burning as a flaming fire on the
tablet of his memory.

* * * * *

The reader must bear with us for being compelled to introduce in our pages
some exceptional characters. Had we consulted our own taste, or painted the
characters ourself, it would not have been so. In this particular, we had
no choice, as the actors were furnished to our hand in the light we have
represented them, as we shall presently show by authenticated history. For
the present, however, we pass to other scenes.--AUTHOR.

CHAPTER IV.

MORE VILLAINY.

From the presence of Miss Fleming, Durant went to an obscure old cabin near
the river, where he met an accomplice in villainy, a tool of his, by the
name of Ramsey, whom he often employed to do hazardous and dirty work, he
himself was too cowardly or too _aristocratic_ to perform. The object of
the present interview was to learn on what boat the Waltons had taken
passage. He was scheming again.

"Ramsey," said he, "what boats have left in the last two weeks to go down
the river?"

"Only three, sir."

"Three! Did you see them all?"

"I did."

"Did you know any of the passengers?"

"I did. Colonel Thomas Marshall commanded one of the boats, with whom there
were a number of Virginians, several of them personally known to me."

"Was there a family by the name of Walton among them?"

"Walton--Walton? I don't know them."

"A father, mother and daughter; the girl eighteen, and uncommonly good
looking--present a