Colonel Colleton was absolutely stunned by the fertility and volubility of the speaker, and after listening for some time longer, as long as it was possible to procure from him anything which might be of service, he took his departure, bending his way next to the wigwam, in which, for the time being, the pedler had taken up his abode.  It will not be necessary that we should go with him there, as it is not probable that anything materially serving his purpose or ours will be adduced from the narrative of Bunce.  In the meantime, we will turn our attention to a personage, whose progress must correspond, in all respects, with that of our narrative.

Guy Rivers had not been unapprized of the presence of the late comers at the village.  He had his agents at work, who marked the progress of things, and conveyed their intelligence to him with no qualified fidelity.  The arrival of Colonel Colleton and his daughter had been made known to him within a few hours after its occurrence, and the feelings of the outlaw were of a nature the most complex and contradictory.  Secure within his den, the intricacies of which were scarcely known to any but himself, he did not study to restrain those emotions which had prompted him to so much unjustifiable outrage.  With no eye to mark his actions or to note his speech, the guardian watchfulness which had secreted so much, in his association with others, was taken off; and we see much of that heart and those wild principles of its government, the mysteries of which contain so much that it is terrible to see.  Slowly, and for a long time after the receipt of the above-mentioned intelligence, he strode up and down the narrow cell of his retreat; all passions at sway and contending for the mastery—­sudden action and incoherent utterance occasionally diversifying the otherwise monotonous movements of his person.  At one moment, he would clinch his hands with violence together, while an angry malediction would escape through his knitted teeth—­at another, a demoniac smile of triumph, and a fierce laugh of gratified malignity would ring through the apartment, coming back upon him in an echo, which would again restore him to consciousness, and bring back the silence so momentarily banished.

“They are here; they have come to witness his degradation—­to grace my triumph—­to feel it, and understand my revenge.  We will see if the proud beauty knows me now—­if she yet continues to discard and to disdain me.  I have her now upon my own terms.  She will not refuse; I am sure of her; I shall conquer her proud heart; I will lead her in chains, the heaviest chains of all—­the chains of a dreadful necessity.  He must die else!  I will howl it in her ears with the voice of the wolf; I will paint it before her eyes with a finger dipped in blood and in darkness!  She shall see him carried to the gallows; I shall make her note the halter about his neck—­that neck, which, in her young thought, her arms were to have encircled only; nor shall she shut her eyes upon