"And why should you ask about them?" demanded the hostess, who, as Herman had long since observed, conversed in language that would scarce have been anticipated from her appearance. "They can have done you no harm, and certainly they never did you good. You cannot fear them, for they are dead; and you yourself said, they left none to lament them."
"But they left many to curse," said Herman; "and it is this that makes me curious to know the truth about them. I have not heard any men pronounce the name, without accompanying it with maledictions; which were just so many proofs that they were unsafe informants."
"It is better then that they should be forgotten," muttered Elsie: "If they did wrong, bitterly have they been punished; if they provoked men to curses, the curses have been heavy on their heads, and are now even heaped upon their graves. Yet you speak of them not like others—how comes it that you pronounce their name without a curse?"
"Simply because, never having received any hurt at their hands, and having nothing of the hound about me, I feel no impulse to join in the cry of the pack, until I know what beast they are baying. I saw, in the village, an old man begging; I was told, his house had been burned down, and his wife and children in it, by 'the accursed Gilberts;' I saw also, a miserable idiot, or madman, I know not which, dancing along the road-side, and inviting me to a wedding: I asked about him, and was informed he dwelt of yore in the Wyoming Valley, and was set upon by the Hawks of Hawk-Hollow, in the hour of his marriage, and he alone saved of all the bridal party—I saw"——
"It is enough—God has judged them," said the old woman, with a voice both solemn and reproachful. "All these things have they done, and many more as dreadful and cruel. These are the fruits of civil war; for men are then changed to beasts. I knew a man of Wyoming, who was killed by his own brother—shot through the head, while he knelt down, begging for quarter of his mother's son! God has judged these acts, for they who did them are gone; and God will yet judge the men that drove them into their madness."
"They had cause, then, for what they did?" asked Herman, with interest. "It was not in cold blood, and upon deliberate choice, that they sided with the tories against their countrymen?"
"Perhaps it was, perhaps it was not," said Mrs. Bell, mournfully. "A plough-furrow on the hill-side may grow at last into the bed of a torrent; and what is but a cause for light anger, may, in time, work the brain into a frenzy. But ask me not of these things now: it was in a season like this, twenty-four years since—but it is foolish to remember me of it,—perhaps sinful. Some time, perhaps, I may speak of these unhappy people to you; but I cannot now. Trust, at least, that if the Hawks of Hawk-Hollow, as you called them, did much wrong, they also endured it,—and that, too, when they had not provoked it."
Finding that his curiosity could obtain no farther gratification at the present moment, Herman Hunter again cast his eyes upon the mansion, and being greatly charmed by an effect made by the striking of the sunshine on certain parts, while others lay in the broadest and deepest shadow, he was seized with a fit of artist-like enthusiasm, and arranging his drawing materials upon a little table, which he drew into the porch for the purpose, he was straightway immersed in the business of sketching. While he was dotting down chimneys and windows with great haste and satisfaction, he was struck with a new and unexpected effect in the picture. A scarlet mantle, beside which glittered another of snowy white, suddenly blazed out like a star from a clump of shadowy trees in the paddock, and he became aware that two females on horseback were issuing from the park, and riding down the road. But losing sight of them again, as they ambled into a hollow, and being now really engrossed in his employment, he thought no more of them, until they suddenly re-appeared from behind a thicket no great distance off, galloping forward with an impetuosity and violence that would have done honour to veteran dragoons.
Somewhat astonished at such an unexpected display of spirit, he dropped his pencil, and for an instant supposed that their ponies were running away with these damsels errant. They were not attired for the saddle, and seemed rather to have sprung upon their palfreys from some sudden whim and spirit of frolic than with a purpose of leaving the park, in which he had first caught sight of them. They were arrayed merely in simple walking-dresses of white, over which one had flung a light scarlet shawl; and instead of caps or round hats, they had low and broad-brimmed hats of thin felt, without veils, much better fitted for rambling in, over sunny meads, than for displaying to the winds on horseback.
His suspicion that their ponies had taken the matter into their own hands,—or rather the bits into their own teeth, was of short duration; and as they advanced with increased rapidity, he saw plainly, by the mirthful rivalry displayed in all their actions and gestures, that they were positively running a race, the scarlet mantle being the winner,—or, so far, at least, as a full length would go, in full prospect of winning.