ll my story in the sight of
these pure skies."

I followed him without a word. He had affected me. The invocation in
which he had indulged, and which, from another man, and other
circumstances, would have struck me as a theatrical attempt upon my
sympathy as forced as it was unnatural, was in him so appropriate, and
in such keeping with the grandeur of the scene by which we were
surrounded, that I was disarmed of criticism, and succumbed without
resistance to his power.

The cave, once entered, was light enough. On the ground were spread in
profusion leaves and twigs of the sweet-smelling cedar, making a carpet
as pleasing as it was warm and healthful. On one side I saw a mound of
the same, making a couch, across which a great cloak was spread; while
beyond, the half-defined forms of a rude seat and table appeared,
lending an air of habitableness to the spot, which, from the exterior, I
had hardly expected to find. A long slab of stone served as a hearth,
and above it I perceived a hole in the rock, toward which a thin column
of smoke was rising from a few smouldering embers that yet remained
burning upon the great stone below. Altogether, it was a home I had
entered; and awed a little at the remembrance that it had been the
refuge of this solitary man through years pregnant with events forever
memorable in the history of the world as those which gave birth to a new
nation, I sank down upon the pile of cedar he pointed out to me, and
waited in some impatience for him to begin his tale.

This he seemed in no hurry to do. He waited so long with his chin sunk
in his two hands and his eyes fixed upon vacancy, that I grew restless
and was about to break the silence myself, when, without moving, he
suddenly spoke.

CHAPTER VII.

TWO WOMEN.

"You want to hear about Edwin Urquhart. Well, you shall, but first I
promise you that I shall talk much less of him than of another person.
Why? because it is on account of this other person that I hate him, and
solely because of this other person that I avenge myself, or seek to
assist others in avenging the justice you say he has outraged.

"We were friends from boyhood. Reared in the same town and under the
same influences, there was a community of interests between us that
threw us together and made us what is called friends. But I never liked
him. That is, I never felt a confidence in him which is essential to a
mutual understanding. And, though I accepted his compani