The Secret Shot; Or, The Rivals Of Misty Mount — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

12 THE SECRET SHOT. unmercifully persecuted. The latter bore it meekly for a while. But one day, the mas- ter being from home, the beautiful slave was seized by the order of her mistress, and firmly bound in a deep, dungeon-like cellar beneath the house. Here, alone, with a torch in one hand and a many-thonged whip in the other, the lady, insane through jeal- ousy, inflicted a terrible punishment upon the person of the slaye. The lash was ap- plied till the wearied hand of the torturess could lifs it no longer; and then the red tongue of the torch was applied, with the skill of a fiend’s malignity, so as not to mar so much as to scorch, till malice itself was sated, and the cup of vengeance dry to the dregs. But there was no need to have con- fined the victim in a shrick-stifling dungeon to accomplish this; the partition that sepa- rated her from the listening world might have been of pasteboard for aught that the world would have known of the deed en- acting within. For not a sound—not a murmur escaped the suffering victim on that rack of pain. She set her lips, without a tear. At length, the tormentress, fearing her husband’s return, released and revived her victim. To her astonishment, the heroic Judith did not rush to her master and dis- play her scars to excite his pity and fury. She moved about the house as before, with- out a murmur, almost without a twinge of the lip. “No matter,” thought the baffled tormentress, with an inward smile, “I can wait till another time. I can flog her to the quick, if I bide my time.” But human calculations are never certain. That evye- ning the lady fell sick. And Judith waited upon and nursed her mistress, in spite of the protestations-of the latter, with an assi- duity which was positively filial. Slowly the patient grew worse. Her case was be- yond the doctor's comprehension. — Her teeth were gradually loosened; her hair fell out; her skin shrunk to parchment; and, after many days of indescribable anguish, she died. Scarcely a year. elapsed before the maiden sister of Gleason was seized with the same horrible disease, but in a swifter form. She also perished; and Ju- dith had the actual, as she had long had the virtual, control of Jacob Gleason’s house- hold. The latter—his fortunes well-nigh trebled by these sudden deaths—had, short- ly after, emigrated to the vicinity of Misty the lovely quadroon had sufficed to generate an ineffaceable impression in the heart of the youthful warrior. Perhaps this passion was requited; but Judith had clung to the mas- ter with whose fate she felt her own to be inextricably blended; although the attach- ment thus formed between her and her In- dian lover was never obliterated. Here, in- deed, was the secret loadstone which held the warrior to the old scenes which his tribe had long deserted. So now we see them together, as the night falls around them, like the many years that have dropped upon their hearts since the hot blood was coursing in their veins. And Judith does not take her hand from the pensive savage. There is something so mournful and tender between these tyo for- .lorn wild beings, that each experiences the personal influence of the other as a feeling balmy and grateful. Well may it be thus with these two hearts, so fierce and lonely, each stained with crimes which the blind, passionate temperament of the possessor justifies. as inevitable; and each yearning with that hungry longing which descends upon the hopeless of soul. At length, Judith broke the long silence: “fas the dark deed of an hour ago come yet to the chieftain’s knowledge?’ she asked. “Yes, my sweet Flower. And the doer, whoever he be, hath one crime the more to lay like a burden at the foot of the Great Spirit’s throne.” “ And I one foe the less,” said the quad- roon, moodily. “There are but two left now, Wandalo. My vengeance is almost complete.” “And yet the white Lily of the Valley, at the white chief’s mansion on the Moun- tain side, will droop in the blight that snatched her brother bloom,” said the say- age, pityingly. “Let her droop!” was the fierce rejoin- der; and Judith snatched her hand from the Indian’s hold. “The Thunder-Scorner is no friend of the Passion-Flower, if he would water the Lily with a pitying tear!" “The Great Spirit gave the chieftain a ‘tender heart,” was the low reply. ‘“ Wan- dalo can not forget the bright Sunbeam with the golden hair that played on the slopes when the valley was young and the pale- faces were few; how shall he forget the Mount, where we now find him. The tribe | glorious pure Lily that now droops at her to which Wandalo belonged was then quite numerous in the mountains. The sight of brother’s grave ?” : “ It must be otherwise!” said the quadroon, ad