"There, now are we even? You deprived me of a fortune I was brought up to expect; I have managed to get some of it back. You loved a woman, and I married her. You married another woman, the most glorious creature I ever saw, and in a fit of jealous rage with me, turned her out upon the world to die.
"Tell me now, if my revenge has been complete?"
Mellen ran to the door and opened it.
"Come in," he cried to the officers. "Carry that man away! Take him to the lodge; he shall not even die here."
"As you will," cried Ford. "I will hold my tongue for that poor woman's sake."
He could not walk, so they carried him down to the lodge, and there, while waiting for a doctor to come, he sat looking death in the face, with the same desperate bravado that had marked his conduct all the night.
CHAPTER LXXVII.
SEARCHING.
Shriek after shriek from Elsie roused Mellen. She was raving in horrible delirium, and when assistance arrived it proved that she had been seized with brain fever, and there was scarcely a hope of her recovery.