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."