The story described, at some length, the
excitement caused by the murder, the unavailing quest after the
perpetrator, the funeral ceremonies, and other commonplace matters, in
the course of which, I brought forward the personages who were to move
among the succeeding events. They were but three. A young man and his
sister; the former characterized by a diseased imagination and morbid
feelings; the latter, beautiful and virtuous, and instilling something of
her own excellence into the wild heart of her brother, but not enough to
cure the deep taint of his nature. The third person was a wizard; a
small, gray, withered man, with fiendish ingenuity in devising evil, and
superhuman power to execute it, but senseless as an idiot and feebler
than a child to all better purposes. The central scene of the story was
an interview between this wretch and Leonard Doane, in the wizard's hut,
situated beneath a range of rocks at some distance from the town. They
sat beside a smouldering fire, while a tempest of wintry rain was beating
on the roof.
The young man spoke of the closeness of the tie which united him and
Alice, the consecrated fervor of their affection from childhood upwards,
their sense of lonely sufficiency to each other, because they only of
their race had escaped death, in a night attack by the Indians.
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