THE TEXAN HUNTRESS. 825 
Your pale tyrant is gone—he was my tyrant, too! With his 
foot upon your neck, he clutched with bloody hands at mine. 
Then I was furious because I must be free! You come te 
console—because the oppressed have learned to know what 
gentle pity is. You have Cain’s mark upon your clouded 
brow—but so has truth. There is the allegory! ‘The meek 
shall inherit the earth!’—‘He that was first shall be last!’ 
That brow shall grow bright once more—the curse shall be 
annealed !—It shall grow pure and white with love and truth 
—not pale of fear—livid with murder, and flushed with the 
ghastly mark of bloody hands! I hate my guilty race!” she 
continued to murmur in a lower voice—“I hate our ferocious 
cowardice! We dare not be men like the hunting fathers of | 
thy hunted race—the hairy children of the accursed Cain! 
We dare not meet brute force with brute force, and hand to 
claw grapple with the lion in his might! We sneak behind 
our cunning, and pervert the laws of mechanics—which govern 
the Universe, rule the destinies of men and the earth—into 
the horrible agents of wholesale destruction from behind our 
sheltered ramparts !”” 
“Why, what is the woman ranting about?” said the Planter 
nervously—turning to me with a bewildered look. “TI ’most 
‘believe she is a witch myself! Who ever heard such wild 
gabble? And yet she talks very plain!” 
She had stopped when he spoke, and deliberately turned 
her eyes upon him, and I saw nothing more in their expression 
now than I had noted from the first—a sort of calm, intense 
enthusiasm or stern elevation. So far as appearances went, 
the crazy fit had passed, and she, if not restored to sanity, 
‘had at least returned to her habitual mood and manner. She 
spoke very coldly— 
“Yes!—‘ranting about ?’—a convenient word that! I 
rant when you either will not or dare not understand! I 
rant when I tell you truths you have not the soul or the 
heart to face! I rant when I tell you that you are either an 
