You are a villain and murderer, and I loathe, oh! unspeakably loathe, your presence.

Away from me, or--" "Or," interrupted Braxley with the sneer of a naturally mean and vindictive spirit, "you will cry for assistance! From whom do you expect it?
From wild, murderous, besotted Indians, who, if roused from their drunken slumbers, would be more like to assail you with their hatchets than to weep for your sorrows?
Know, fair Edith, that you are now in their hands;--that there is not one of them, who would not rather see those golden tresses hung blackening in the smoke from the rafters of his wigwam, than floating over the brows they adorn--Look aloft: there are ringlets of young and fair, the innocent and tender, swinging above you!--Learn, moreover, that from these dangerous friends there is none who can protect you, save _me_.

Ay, my beauteous Edith," he added, as the captive, overcome by the representation of her perils so unscrupulously, nay, so sternly made, sank almost fainting upon the pile, "it is even so; and you must know it.

It is needful you should know what you have to expect, if you reject my protection.

But that you will not reject; in faith, you _cannot!_ The time has come, as I told you it would, when your disdainful scruples--I speak plainly, fair Edith!--are to be at an end.