for his wife. From her untameable nature, fiery temper, graceful shape, and extraordinary agility, she was called among the tribe the Young Panther; but fierce and untractable as she was to others, even to her father, to O’Brien she was docile as a spaniel, gentle as a lamb; in his iron will and unconquerable pride she recognised a nature which mastered hers, and bound her thenceforth his obedient and submissive slave. Her devotion to him, and her great beauty made O’Brien readily give her a share of his lodge, but with no other intention than that of casting her off as soon as it suited him to do so. A favourite rendezvous of the tribe for autumn fishing was in the neighbourhood of Long Arrow, and when the season arrived, O’Brien, now quite recovered, accompanied them thither. The evening of their arrival he sent the Young Panther to the village to make inquiries about Keefe, and waited for her return in Brady’s shanty, which had been uninhabited since its old owners had left Long Arrow. While he was waiting Coral came in, and dim as the firelight was, and little as he expected to see her there, O’Brien at once recognised her. Her few broken sentences revealed to his quick, keen intellect nearly all that he wanted to know, aided by the tidings of Keefe’s marriage brought by the Young Panther. Her father was dead; she had run away from her guardians to marry Keefe, and had found him married to another. Now then she was again at his mercy, he would carry her off without anyone being the wiser, except the Young Panther, whom he knew he could easily manage; and then if he found she had inherited her father’s property, as he did not doubt, he would marry her, and claim it as soon as she was of age. Having learnt all the Young Panther had to tell him, and communicated as much of his intentions to her as he thought proper, O’Brien walked up to Coral, where she still sat on the floor, with her face hidden in her hands.
“Coral! “ he said, in his own peculiar tones, clear, hard, penetrating and cold, “look at me.”
She removed her hands from her face, and looked at him with an expression of fixed, quiet, passionless despair, which might have moved anyone that had. a touch of pity in his nature.
“Do you know me?” asked O’Brien.
“Yes, I know you,” she said.
“And you remember how a few months ago you scorned and spurned me, for the sake of Keefe Dillon? He has rewarded you well.”
She made no answer, but continued to look at him with the same marble, rigid stare.
“He has forsaken you for another; she is his darling and delight now; he neither knows nor cares whether you are living or dead.”
Still she neither spoke nor stirred.
“He has cast off your love as a fickle boy might cast off a horse or hound, for a new one; and if he thinks of you at all, it is only to laugh at your folly in giving your heart to one that never wanted it. But you have it in your power now to show that you are no longer so weak. Come with me, and have your revenge! Keefe Dillon has slighted, scorned, and forsaken you: henceforth hate him, curse him, and swear to be revenged on him, as I do!”
He said this with an unmoved face, and without raising his voice in the least; but no distortion of feature, no vehemence of accent could have expressed the same intense malignity and immovable determination of purpose that the hard, fixed, i remorseless immobility of his face, and the low, clear tones of his voice conveyed. Coral looked at him for an instant longer with the same absent, incomprehending look with which she had hitherto regarded him, and then a sudden conception of his meaning appeared to flash upon her: she started to her feet with a bound All her wild Indian blood, which had just before seemed cold and stagnant as ice, now rushed in a torrent to her cheek, swelled the blue veins on her forehead till they stood out like cords on its fair, smooth surface, and flashed like keen lightnings from her eyes.
“Coward!” she exclaimed, “to speak thus of Keefe Dillon to me! Oh, God! that I had Keefe’s strength for only one minute! There crawls not on the earth a snake that I loathe and scorn as I loathe and scorn you. And all the happiness and joy of this world, all the bliss and glory of heaven are less to me than the lightest hair of Keefe Dillon’s head.”
O’Brien folded his arms, and looked at her with his cold and scornful smile.
“Well, be it so!” he said, coolly; “but you must go with me, all the same.”
Coral met his glance with one of haughty defiance; her lips were compressed; her brow knit; her face glowed with indignation; a dangerous life lit up her eyes. O’Brien regarded her with the same air of calm observation with which he might have contemplated a piece of sculptured stone for a few seconds: then he resumed—
“Coral, I believe you know pretty well that my words are never idle breath; when I say I will do a thing I mean to do it. I mean now to take you away with me. Resistance will be useless, for you see I have help at hand;” and he glanced at the Young Panther, who was leaning against the wall and watching what passed between them, with looks of apparent indifference. She never dreamt of dreading a rival in the pale, forlorn, despairing young creature before her.
“There’s no chance of Keefe’s coming to rescue you now,” continued O’Brien; “he has his wife to watch over now, and it is all the same to him whether you are living or dead, married to me, or buried at the bottom of the lake. He will never trouble himself about you more.”
These words recalled Coral to a sense of her misery, which the passion of rage and scorn O’Brien had awakened in her breast had for an instant conquered. Her face changed from its expression of proud and indignant defiance to one of deadly anguish.
“Oh, God! It is true!” she cried. “What matter what becomes of me now;” and once more she sank on the floor like one who had no longer any wish to struggle against Fate, but bowed her head to the billows of woe, that they might the