“Hear you this, Colonel de Haldimar?” shouted the latter in a fierce and powerful voice, and in the purest English accent; “hear you the curse and prophecy of this heart-broken woman?  You have slain her husband, but she has found another.  Ay, she shall be my bride, if only for her detestation of yourself.  When next you see us here,” he thundered, “tremble for your race.  Ha, ha, ha! no doubt this is another victim of your cold and calculating guile; but it shall be the last.  By Heaven, my very heart leaps upward in anticipation of thy coming hour.  Woman, thy hatred to this man has made me love thee; yes, thou shall be my bride, and with my plans of vengeance will I woo thee.  By this kiss I swear it.”

As he spoke, he bent his face over that of the pale and inanimate woman, and pressed his lips to hers, yet red and moist with blood spots from the wounds of her husband.  Then wresting, with a violent effort, his reeking tomahawk from the cranched brain of the unfortunate soldier, and before any one could recover sufficiently from the effect of the scene altogether to think even of interfering, he bore off his prize in triumph, and fled, with nearly the same expedition he had previously manifested, in the direction of the forest.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

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