Truly, friend, it is quite amazing, the ill things thee has brought me to!" "Had there been twenty of the villains, and you had killed them all, I should have held it the noblest and most virtuous act you could have performed," said Roland, too fiercely agitated by his own contending passions to note the strange medley of self-accusing and exculpatory expressions, the shame-faced, conscience-stricken looks, alternating with gleams of military fire and self-complacency, with which the man of peace recounted his bloody exploit, or the adroit attempt, with which he concluded it, to shuffle the responsibility of the crime, if crime it were, from his own to the young Virginian's shoulders.

At another moment, the latter might have speculated with as much surprise as approval on the extraordinary metamorphosis of Nathan, the man of amity and good will, into a slayer of Indians, double-dyed in gore; but at that juncture, he had little inclination to dwell on anything save his own liberation and the hapless fate of his cousin..