The central scene of the story was an interview between this
wretch and Leonard Doane, in the wizard's hut, situated beneath a
range of rocks at some distance from the town. They sat beside a
smouldering fire, while a tempest of wintry rain was beating on the
roof. The young man spoke of the closeness of the tie which united him
and Alice, the consecrated fervor of their affection from childhood
upwards, their sense of lonely sufficiency to each other, because they
only of their race had escaped death, in a night attack by the
Indians. He related his discovery or suspicion of a secret sympathy
between his sister and Walter Brome, and told how a distempered
jealousy had maddened him. In the following passage, I threw a
glimmering light on the mystery of the tale.
"Searching," continued Leonard, "into the breast of Walter Brome, I
at length found a cause why Alice must inevitably love him. For he was
my very counterpart! I compared his mind by each individual portion,
and as a whole, with mine. There was a resemblance from which I shrunk
with sickness, and loathing, and horror, as if my own features had
come and stared upon me in a solitary place, or had met me in
struggling through a crowd.
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