Chapter X: Conclusion

We have little more to say. As the reader will conclude without reading the fact, Walter and Ellen were married, according to their original arrangements, and afterward lived in the enjoyment of that happiness which love alone can procure, and which can be found only at the domestic fireside where peace reigns; their descendants may still be found in Kentucky and other western states.

Durant recovered from his hurt, and lived for some years to plot more mischief, and fail in his designs. He at last quarreled with one of his savage followers, and in a fit of anger, struck him a blow with his fist. The indignity was never forgotten or forgiven. The Indian vowed to be revenged, and he kept his oath; dogging the steps of his foe, he found an opportunity to inflict a wound, which felled his adversary to the earth. With proper attention he might have recovered, but his enemy left him disabled and bound, to die by slow inches!

His wound, at first very painful, soon began to mortify, and he felt the worms in his still living body! Vultures came to feast upon him, ere the vital spark of existence had gone out within him, and he had not the strength left to lift a hand, or speak a word in his own defense, though their long beaks were stretched over him and planted in his flesh and eyes! And when death at last came, and laid his icy fingers upon his heart, for the final stilling of its disquiet and guilty throbbing, his failing senses were suddenly and momentarily aroused, and the curdling blood sent again with quickened impulse through his veins, as his dull ears were saluted with the horrible sound of the howlings of wild beasts in the distance; and the last things that his closing, almost sightless balls beheld were the glaring eyes of the monsters of the forest, as they gloated over their prey!

The sight was enough to finish the work of dissolution, already advanced near to completion, and the sluggish blood rushed for the last time upon his paralyzed heart with such chilling coldness and mastering power, that it ceased to beat, and the wretch was dead!

Then a fight took place over his putrefying carcass, and the screech of the vulture, mingled with the angry growl of the wolf, as they contended for the remains of the man of crimes in their wild fury and ferocious hunger!

A few hours longer, and the flesh was all torn from his frame, and only a ghostly, grinning skeleton was left of the once proud and vicious Louis Durant; and yet fresh beasts arriving upon the scene, disappointed in their anticipated feast, howled a dismal requiem over his bones, which were left, without sepulture, to bleach in the winds and storms of heaven!

Such was the terrible end of the _villain_, while the _victims_ of his hate and malice, against whom he had plotted so often and so fiendishly, were happy in the enjoyment of life's best blessings; and thus the story points its own moral.

THE END