Perhaps untoward events had turned the slaver into his evil career, and at the last he had shown some good.

The French were surely fighting for what they thought was their own, and they struck in order that they might not be struck.
Tandakora himself was the creature of his circumstances.

He hated the people of the English colonies, because they were spreading over the land and driving away the game.

He was cruel because it was the Ojibway nature to be cruel.

He would have to fight Tandakora, but it was because conditions had made it necessary.
His absorption as a student now made him forget often that he was alone, and there were long periods when he was not unhappy, especially when he was trying to solve some abstruse mental problem.