University of Virginia Library

20. CHAPTER XX.

With a better fortune than had awaited the
volunteer, Herman Hunter stepped into the grot;
but with much less display of heroism; for he
no sooner found himself in presence of the renowned
Hawk of the Hollow than he bent his eyes
upon the ground, and stood silent before him.

“You are come at last!” said the refugee, giving
him a piercing look, and with a voice none the
less expressive of indignation for being subdued to
the lowest tones, as if he feared a witness even in
the dead malefactor; “you are come at last; and
the son of my father comes with my enemies and
hunters!”

“So I come,” said the painter, raising his eyes,
and speaking firmly; “I come as the friend, who,
having saved you from one danger, desires to rescue
you from another yet greater. I warned you
last night,—nay, I sent you word long since, that
you were watched: I betrayed a confidence reposed
in me by one it was a double duplicity to
decoive, in order that you might escape the net
that was secretly closing around you. Nay, I discovered
the presence and machinations of the
daring spy, who but this morning was selling you

into the hands of your enemies; I found his letter,
and left it where you were sure to obtain it.”—

“Ay; while you were yourself playing the fool
among the Independents, and leaving me to the
care of a stupid ploughman and a dotish old woman!”

“It was all I could,” said Herman: “I knew it
was better I should be on the ground, when the
officers came. Had I not been there, to join the
first of the hunters, as you call them, and to fire
an alarm in the hollow, neither your own cunning
nor the fleetness of the roan horse could have
saved you from capture.”

“It was bravely done,” said the refugee, with a
softer voice, “and it will excuse what is passed.
Where found you this dog's paper? and how?”

“Near the park-gate, under a bush, where I saw
the man hide it, as I approached the place by accident.
This fellow knows all your haunts: will
he not bring the troops to this very spot?”

The refugee laughed, and at that moment Herman
heard a noise on the bough of the oak tree,
as of some animal rending away the bark; and
looking up, he beheld what he had not before seen
in the gloom,—the body of the dead traitor swinging
with a sort of jerking, convulsive motion, as
if still alive. The rope had slipped a little along
the bough, and though soon arrested by some knot
or other roughness, it was some moments before
the motion entirely ceased. The dreadful and unexpected
spectacle of a man, who, it was evident,
the painter thought, had made his escape, thus
hanging dead before him, filled him with horror,
and he exclaimed at once,

“Oh, Oran! Oran! it is this dreadful cruelty of
spirit which has made you what you are,—which
has made us all what we are! For God's sake, let
us cut him down, and see if he be yet alive.”

“He was stiff before the rope touched his neck,”
said Oran, grimly; “I never struck twice with the
hatchet. Let him hang: he died the death of a spy
and betrayer. I have invited the county to his
death-bed!”

“Daring, as well as cruel! Why do you linger
here? It is plain, you are surrounded: before the sun
sets the whole county will be out; and, to-morrow,
there will not be a den of the woods, or a hollow
of the hills, left unvisited.”

“Why, this is what I want!” cried the fierce
outlaw; “the general has tied my hands to act
only on the defensive; and here are forty devils
with heads of iron and fingers of fire, that are
lying asleep in the woods like winter bears, for
want of something to warm the blood in them. I
am ready.”

“Ready to die!” said Herman, solemnly;
“ready to throw away your life at the bidding of
a master, or the prompting of an insane passion.
Fly, while you yet may: the attempt to rescue
young Asgill must be now fruitless, as it is needless—even
the Americans say, his life is in no danger.
Fly, then, Oran, and give up your bloody
designs in this fatal Hollow. Hearken to me,
Oran,”—

“Hearken to me,” said the outcast, sternly.
“Has your blood turned to milk, and your heart
to water? Are your wounds healed, your bones
knit, your strength restored, and do you talk of
leaving Hawk-Hollow at this moment? What is
this they say of you? You were among the foremost
of the rejoicing fools at the Hawks' Nest—
have you turned American?”

“I was born upon these hills; but I will not
strike the friends and countrymen of my father.”

“Will you strike his foes?”

“They are in the grave with him,” said the
youth, sorrowfully; “and he has forgiven them.”

“They are upon the earth, and his spirit is not
satisfied!” cried Oran, with the wild energy, and
almost in the favourite language, of an Indian orator.
“Have you rested under his roof? have you
sat in his flower-garden? have you walked on his
path by the Run-side? have you spoken with the
people that drove him in his old age from his fireside?
Hyland Gilbert! they broke his heart, and
then trampled him to death. Will you not do him
right and vengeance?”

“Oran!”—

“Changeling!” cried the refugee, with a scowl
of savage contempt; “if you have not the feelings
of a man, you have at least the gewgaw brain of
a boy. Look!” he continued, drawing from his
bosom, and displaying with a sneering grin, a roll
of written parchment, decorated with the due
pomp of martialness; “you begged for the toy that
would make you a servant of the king; and here
it is. Take it; and for the sake of a red coat and
feather, do what you would not for the name and
honour of your father.”

Hyland—for the assumed name of the young
Gilbert must now be dropped—recoiled from the
emblem of distinction as much as from the frowning
eyes of the speaker, but answered firmly,—

“When I was in the Islands, it is true, I desired
the king's commission; and, it is also true, I left
them to obtain it; and had I reached the royal
army at my first landing, no doubt I should have
accepted it. But it was my fate to be cast ashore
far in the south; and I esteem it no bad fortune
that I obeyed a whim of adventure, and made my
way through my rebel countrymen (they are ours,
Oran,) to this spot. I have thus been made acquainted

with some of the principles on which this
war is contested; whereby, I thank heaven, I have
been spared the shedding of innocent blood in an
unjust cause.”

“Do you say this to me?” cried the refugee,
with a wild laugh.

“Oran!” said the young man earnestly, “your
heart is not with the side you have espoused; and
fierce and cruel as may be your acts, they are,
they must be, at variance with your conscience.
A moment of fury drove you into a cause you abhor;
and if you give the bloodiest proofs of your
fidelity, you are impelled to them only by remorse
and despair.”

“You are a philosopher!” said the renegade,
with another bitter laugh; “but we will play the
fool no longer. Will you have the commission?
See, it has the royal mark upon it!”

“Oran,” said Hyland, mournfully, “after yourself,
I am the last of my father's house. You ask
me to do what has brought the others to their
graves—to early and ignominious graves; and
what, though you have been spared, has left you
the prey of shame and sorrow. Why should I
strike those men, who, besides fighting against
tyrannous oppression, (such it was, Oran,) are also
the children of the same soil—our countrymen and
brothers?”

“You are the last of the seven,” said the refugee,
taking both the young man's hands into his, and
looking at him with mingled affection and anger;
“four of your brothers were slain—one of them
hanged upon a gibbet—and all by `our countrymen
and brothers!” The fifth—look you, Hyland,
the fifth—the second-born and the beloved, whose
name was given you, that you might never forget
him, fell in battle, saving the life of one of these—
my countryman and my brother!”

The face of the outcast blackened, and Hyland
trembled in his glance; he stepped out of the nook,
and leading the young man along, conducted him
up the hill to a place where a vista through the
trees, looking over the green swamp, disclosed a
glimpse of the blue ridgy cliffs of the Kittatinny,
to which he pointed.

“Come with me to that mountain,” he said,
“and when you stand upon the summit, gazing to
the right and to the left, you will look upon two
graves. One of them lies in the desert, among
the hills: I planted a pine tree on it, and you can
see its blue head afar off. Do you remember who
sleeps in it?”

“I do,” said Hyland, with emotion; “it is my
brother.”

“And do you bethink you what laid him there?”

“His humanity and his noble heart.”

“He died,” said Oran Gilbert—“he died that a
villain might live; and you call that villain `my
countryman and brother!' ”

“No,” said Hyland, with some of his wild brother's
spirit; “I except him.”

“Then look to the left,” continued Oran, with a
glance of painful humiliation: “on the brook, and
in a little bower, there is a second grave.”

“It is the grave of my poor wronged sister!”
cried Hyland, impetuously.

“Of your sister, and of—. Ha, ha! Is not
this a merry subject for two brothers to talk on!
`My countryman and brother' destroyed her and
fled.”

“May heaven pardon him,” cried Hyland; “but
I cannot.”

“We buried her in secret, and in night, that
none might look upon her shame, or upon ours,”
said the refugee; “and that night came into the

world her brother, whom we called Hyland, that
we might better remember her destroyer.”

“Oran! Oran!”

“Your mother,” continued the elder brother,
with a cruel pertinacity, “loved the girl well, and
died of sorrow for her. My `countrymen and
brothers' pointed at our shame; they visited the
sins of the children upon the father, and drove him
forth in his old age, a childless and ruined man.”

“They did,” said the youth; “he came to the
island, and he died in my arms.”

“My `countrymen and brothers,' ” added Oran,
with a ferocious sneer, “have left the oldest and
youngest to weep for the others.—Here is the commission—We
will avenge them!”

For a moment Hyland seemed to share the fire
of the outcast; for a moment he grasped the parchment
which the other had put into his hand. His
face flushed,—then turned pale; he hesitated,—
faltered; the badge of honour fell to the earth;
and clasping his hands together, he looked at Oran
imploringly, and said,

“My father died in my arms, and charged me,
with his last breath, to forget that he had been
wronged.”

“It was the weakness of his death-hour,” said
Oran.

“He bade me,” continued the youth, “leave his
enemies to God, and the destroyer of his peace to
his fate.”

“Look at his fate!” cried the refugee: “wealth
surrounds him, and he is envied for his happiness;
while you are ashamed of your father's name, and
I am poor, and abhorred, and miserable.”

“We will go to the island, and forget”—

“Will you have the commission?” said Oran,
abruptly. “You have youth, talents, education
and fortune,—and will rise. This commission is

to serve among the royal refugees; but if you
carry it bravely at the first bout, I have the General's
word you shall be transferred to the line, with
a fair field for promotion.”

“Look, Oran,” said the youth, manfully, “I will
not take the commission, nor will I trust your commander's
promises. You have served him from
the beginning; and none have served him better.
How has he rewarded you?—You are still a captain
of refugees!”

A shadow of humiliation passed over the face of
the renegade; but he answered without emotion.

“I sought nothing better, nor am I fit for promotion.
My station is where my habits and inclinations
put me,—among the free rangers. But you
have learning, youth, ambition; and are capable
of training into discipline.”

“I will not take the commission,” said Hyland,
with increasing resolution. “I have been enough
with our people,—with the Americans,—to know
that their cause is just, and holy, and is prevailing.
Nay, you must know, that, at this moment, commissioners
are deliberating over the preliminaries
of negotiation, and that peace must soon be concluded.”

“It is false,” said the refugee, fiercely; “a trick
of the ministers,—a common stratagem.”

“True, or false, then, yet am I resolved to shed
no blood in the quarrel; and, certainly, I will take
no commission to distress the people of this neighbourhood.
Oran, I am resolved; I will not fight;
and I adjure you by the last wish of our poor father,
and by your own hopes of future quiet, that
you give up your schemes of blood, and leave this
fatal valley for ever. Disband your followers;
and take heed you be not suddenly deserted by
your employers.”

“Boy!” said the outlaw, “you are not white-livered,

or you would not say these things to me!
Look you, I know your folly: it is not for me,—
not because you love liberty and peace,—not because
you have laid to heart the dotish words of
a half crazed father,—that you are so cold and
shameless; but because you have set your eyes
on the baby face of a girl, who will laugh at you,
when the last fit of your folly is over. Hark you,
—read me this knavish letter, and see what is already
said of you.”

“I have read it,” said the young man, faltering.

“Ay, but read it again: let me know how far
your madness has been talked of.” And Hyland,
summoning courage, took the letter and read it,
though his embarrassment increased at the paragraph
concerning himself, which had caused Oran
to snatch it so suddenly from the hands of the
volunteer. This paragraph, couched in the coarsest
terms, expressed a knowledge of his affections,
which had alarmed him at first excessively, though,
it was probable, it was nothing more than the
shrewd guess of a keen observer; and it concluded
by showing how easily he might be `nabbed, while
at his gallivanting.'

“And this, then,” cried the refugee, “it is that
makes you so tame, so spiritless! Poor fool, could
you look on none but the betrothed of a Falconer?
Look you, boy, you are in a bear-trap, and the
log will soon be on your back: with this baby
fancy, shameful and dishonourable, you are gulling
yourself into perdition.”

“Oran,” cried the young man, throwing himself
upon the wild man's mercy, “this poor girl is betrothed
against her will; and if no friend stands
by her, there will be another broken heart laid by
the side of Jessie. Do not scoff at me, or reproach
me: she saved my life, she has treated me with a

sister's kindness and trust; and if she will suffer
me to aid her, I will rescue her from her misery,
though I die for it.”

“Do what you will,” said Oran, with a gloomy
frown: “though you had her heart and love, what
will she say to you, when this cunning daughter of
a villain, that sent yonder Parker to the rope, ferrets
out your secret, and shows you to be a son of
the Gilberts? Nay, what will others say to you?
It is better to die as a soldier, than a spy!”

“I am no spy,” said Hyland; “and when the
time comes for disclosure, I will not fear to acknowledge
my name.”

“It will soon come,” said the refugee. “Go,”
he added, sternly; “you are rushing upon destruction.
Save yourself as you can, till midnight; and
then take the commission, or be lost. Begone from
this place; it will be soon full of soldiers—I have
sent for them; and already they are coming.—
Brother,” he said, relenting, as the young man
turned to depart: he strode after him and took him
by the hand: “What have you or I to do with the
love of woman? This is but a folly.—You have
no friend or kinsman left to advise or help you.—
Well, if the girl be willing to fly, why, put her upon
a fleet horse, and to-morrow she shall be beyond
the reach of a Falconer. It shall not be said, I
deserted you, even in your folly.”

How much further the wild and flinty outlaw
might have been softened by the distress he saw
pictured on his brother's face, cannot be told.
The gentler feeling of affection beginning to yearn
in his bosom, was chased away by a sudden sound
like the flourish of a distant trumpet, which came
trembling over the forest-leaves.

“Away,” he cried hastily; “the curs are coming,
and the troop with them. Dive into the swamp,

and meet them on the road. To-night you shall
see me.”

So saying, he bounded down the hill with the
activity of a mountain-buck, and was almost instantly
lost to sight. The brother, crossing the
swamp and brook, made his way to the road, some
distance above the spot where he had dismounted.