"Have you looked at me enough?" the stranger at length asked.
"Yes," the Jaguar answered; "now tell me who you are, what brings you here, and how you reached me."
"Those are a good many questions at once, still I will try to answer them. Who am I? No one knows, and there are moments when I am myself ignorant; I am an accursed, and a reprobate, prowling about the desert like a wild beast in search of prey; the Redskins, whose implacable enemy I am, and in whom I inspire a superstitious terror, call me the Klein Stoman; is this information sufficient for you?"
"What?" the young man exclaimed utterly astounded, "The White Scalper!"
"I am the man," the stranger quietly answered; "I am also known at times by the name of the Pitiless."
All this had been said by the old man in that monotonous and hoarse voice peculiar to men who, deprived for a long time of the society of their fellow men, have been restricted to a forced silence, and hence speaking has become almost a labour to them. The Jaguar gave a start of repulsion at the sight of this sinister man, whose mournful reputation had reached him with all its horrors. His memory immediately recalled all the traits of ferocity and cruelty imputed to this man, and it was under the impression of this recollection that he said to him with an accent of disgust he did not wish to conceal—
"What is there in common between you and me?"
The old man smiled sarcastically.
"God," he answered, "connects all men to each other by invisible bonds which render them responsible one for the other; He willed it so, in His supreme omniscience, in order to render society possible."
On hearing this wild, solitary man pronounce the name of Deity, and utter so strange an argument, the Jaguar felt his surprise redoubled.