“Although I was grown considerably in stature at this period, and was otherwise greatly altered in appearance, I had been recognised in the action by numbers of the regiment; and, indeed, more than once I had, in the intoxication of my rage, accompanied the blow that slew or maimed one of my former associates with a declaration of the name of him who inflicted it.  The consequence was, I was denounced as a rebel and an outlaw, and a price was put upon my head.  Accustomed, however, as I had ever been, to rocks and fastnesses, I had no difficulty in eluding the vigilance of those who were sent in pursuit of me; and thus compelled to live wholly apart from my species, I at length learned to hate them, and to know that man is the only enemy of man upon earth.

“A change now came ever the spirit of my vengeance; for about this period your mother died.  I had never ceased to love, even while I despised her; and notwithstanding, had she, after her flagrant inconstancy, thrown herself into my arms, I should have rejected her with scorn, still I was sensible no other woman could ever supply her place in my affection.  She was, in truth, the only being I had ever looked upon with fondness; and deeply even as I had been injured by her, I wept her memory with many a scalding tear.  This, however, only increased my hatred for him who had rioted in her beauty, and supplanted me in her devotedness.  I had the means of learning, occasionally, all that passed in the regiment; and the same account that brought me the news of your mother’s death also gave me the intelligence that three children had been the fruit of her union with De Haldimar.  How,” pursued Wacousta, with bitter energy, “shall I express the deep loathing I felt for those children?  It seemed to me as if their existence had stamped a seal of infamy on my own brow; and I hated them, even in their childhood, as the offspring of an abhorred, and, as it appeared to me, an unnatural union.  I heard, moreover (and this gave me pleasure), that their father doated on them; and from that moment I resolved to turn his cup of joy into bitterness, even as he had turned mine.  I no longer sought his life; for the jealousy that had half impelled that thirst existed no longer:  but, deeming his cold nature at least accessible through his parental affection, I was resolved that in his children he should suffer a portion of the agonies he had inflicted on me.  I waited, however, until they should be grown up to an age when the heart of the parent would be more likely to mourn their loss; and then I was determined my vengeance should be complete.