Chapter XVI.
"Oh! they were murdered by the wild hunter,—and this is all that remains to tell the fate of our father's friends," cried Maud, tearfully. "But do you think, Clifford—" She paused a moment, leaving her question unfinished; then, springing to her feet in wildest excitement, she exclaimed:—
"We have been blind—blind! but it is all clear now!" and as Rob stood by, dumb with astonishment, she said, in a hoarse whisper, while she wrung her hands in the intensity of her great emotion: "Bruce's daughter—Morelia—Mora!"
"Yes, yes! I have suspected it since the day father called her Ivarene. I always felt, from the moment that we met, as though I had known her all my life. There seemed to be a look of recognition beaming from the eyes of Mora Estill that has haunted me for months. My God! is it possible I have only known her three short weeks? it seems like an eternity," said Clifford, in a musing tone, while Rob exclaimed, hurriedly:—
"That mad hunter was Olin Estill; and it was he who must have stolen Mora at the cavern from Ivarene, and left her at the Estill Ranch before he met his tragic fate. His is the haunted, lonesome grave on the hill-top, of which Mora spoke."
"But, oh, what a terrible retribution!—his limbs torn away by wrangling wolves, and his grinning skull left bleaching on the wild prairie," said Maud, tearfully. "Dear Bruce and Ivarene," she continued, with a sob—"must their history end in silence and oblivion?"
"Do you think, Maud, that the hunter, with all the devilish cunning of madness, could have crept back and poisoned them, and then stolen the child?"
"Ah! it is too sad to contemplate," she replied. "Their fate would have been worse than death; for I now remember having read how ill-starred Carlotta, Maximilian's unhappy empress, was poisoned by some terrible Mexican drug, and all the world knows of her hopeless madness, which will last until death."
"I shudder to think who that gray-robed, ghastly creature, with its tangled locks and glassy eyes, may be," said Clifford, hoarse with emotion.