mised to do. Not so much for his own
security, of which he had no fear, as for the sake of the dear girl
who was so solicitous for his welfare, and to whom his safety was a
matter of so much importance.

The next few days passed uneventfully away, Nat remaining at home,
nursing his wrath and the wounds upon his face, and Henry Schulte
attending to his various duties upon the farm. The quarrel finally
ceased to be a matter of remark, and the simple-minded villagers,
believing that Nat's threats were only the utterances of a man crazed
with drink, and smarting under the punishment he had received,
quieted their fears and resumed their ordinary peaceful and contented
mode of living.

To Nat Toner the days passed all too slowly, but with the
slowly-moving hours, in the seclusion of his own home, and his own
evil thoughts, his revenge became the one object of his life. His
reckless, vagabond existence of the past few years, during which it
was hinted by several of the villagers, with many shrugs of their
shoulders and wise noddings of their venerable heads, he had been
engaged in the service of a bold and successful French smuggler, had
not tended to elevate his mind, or to humanize his disposition. His
depraved nature and vicious habits were roused into full action by
this encounter with Henry Schulte, and the anger of his heart was in
no wise lessened, as he reflected that he had brought his injuries
upon himself. All the brutal instincts of his degraded disposition
were aflame, and he resolved that his revenge for the indignities
that had been put upon him, should be full and complete.

With a fiendish malignity he determined to strike at the heart of his
antagonist through the person of the object of his love, and by that
means to be revenged upon both.

CHAPTER XI.

_A Moonlight Walk._--_An Unexpected Meeting._--_The Murder of
Emerence Bauer._--_The Oath Fulfilled._

On a beautiful moonlight evening, about a week after the hostile
meeting of Henry Schulte and Nat Toner, Emerence, all impatient to
meet her lover, whom she had not seen for some days, and whom she
fondly expected this evening, left the residence of her parents and
walked towards a little stream that ran along the outskirts of the
village, where she had been in the habit of meeting Henry upon the
occasions of his visits.

The evening was a delightful one, and the scene one of surpassingly
romantic beauty. The bright rays of the moon sparkl