Dark suspicions shot across my mind, and I sat silent, but
not without emotions of fear.

A bottle of wine was placed between us, and Seguin, pouring out two
glasses, asked me to drink. This courtesy assured me. "But how if the
wine be poi--?" He swallowed his own glass before the thought had
fairly shaped itself.

"I am wronging him," thought I. "This man, with all, is incapable of an
act of treachery like that."

I drank up the wine. It made me feel more composed and tranquil.

After a moment's silence he opened the conversation with the abrupt
interrogatory, "What do you know of me?"

"Your name and calling; nothing more."

"More than is guessed at here;" and he pointed significantly to the
door. "Who told you thus much of me?"

"A friend, whom you saw at Santa Fe."

"Ah! Saint Vrain; a brave, bold man. I met him once in Chihuahua. Did
he tell you no more of me than this?"

"No. He promised to enter into particulars concerning you, but the
subject was forgotten, the caravan moved on, and we were separated."

"You heard, then, that I was Seguin the Scalp-hunter? That I was
employed by the citizens of El Paso to hunt the Apache and Navajo, and
that I was paid a stated sum for every Indian scalp I could hang upon
their gates? You heard all this?"

"I did."

"It is true."

I remained silent.

"Now, sir," he continued, after a pause, "would you marry my daughter,
the child of a wholesale murderer?"

"Your crimes are not hers. She is innocent even of the knowledge of
them, as you have said. You may be a demon; she is an angel."

There was a sad expression on his countenance as I said this.

"Crimes! demon!" he muttered, half in soliloquy. "Ay, you may well
think this; so judges the world. You have heard the stories of the
mountain men in all their red exaggeration. You have heard that, during
a treaty, I invited a village of the Apaches to a banquet, and poisoned
the viands--poisoned the guests, man, woman, and child, and then scalped
them! You have heard that I induced to pull upon the drag rope of a
cannon two hundred savages, who know not its use; and then fired the
piece, loaded with grape, mowing down the row of unsuspecting wretches!
These, and other inhuman acts, you have no doubt heard of?"

"It is true. I have heard these stories among the mountain hunters; but
I knew not whether to believe them."

"Monsieur, they are false; all false and unfounded."

"I am glad to he