But now we saw, and, seeing, understood.
Near him, yet so far away that the venomous ants had not yet, at least, reached it, there was another body--the body of a woman. It lay on its back, the eyes staring up to the heavens, the tunic torn open at the left breast and in that breast another dagger buried, which still the right hand of the woman, an Indian, grasped and held as firm as when she struck herself her death blow.
So we knew all! We knew that he had escaped the vengeance of the tribe only to die at the hands of the woman who had loved him once, and whose love he had thought to replace--the hands of the woman who, having saved his life at the outset, had taken it from him when he was false to her.
And thus he perished, not by the hands of those from whom he was fleeing, but by those of Lamimi, his slighted and forsaken squaw.
[PART IV]
THE NARRATIVE OF
JOICE BAMPFYLD CONTINUED
[CHAPTER XXIX]
HOMEWARD BOUND
It took not more than three months to put my house into a liveable condition once more, for, most happily, the injury which had been done to it in the Indian raid concerned more the woodwork and the fittings than aught else. Indeed, while this was a-doing, I also took occasion to have many improvements made in various portions of the manor that were sorely needed. Thus, in some of our upstairs rooms, our windows had in them nothing but oiled paper, while others were furnished with naught but Muscovy glass or sheets of mica, dating back from the time of the first Bampfyld who came to the colony. These I now replaced by crystal glass brought from England for the purpose.
Yet, in spite of changes and, I suppose, improvements, I could not restrain my tears when first I set eyes on my saloon again. Oh! how sad it was to see the spinet and the harpsichord broken to pieces--everything stood exactly as we had left it that night--to see also my choice Segodia carpets stained with the dried blood that had been shed, and to observe my window-sashes, with their pretty gildings, in splinters.