He sat down at her side, and addressed some few questions to her in relation to the stranger, but received such vague and irrelevant answers as convinced him her meditations were too engrossing to be easily broken. He proceeded therefore without delay to seek some other means of amusing his mind; and casting his eyes towards the distant hall, he was, in a few moments, plunged in reflections as absorbing, or even more so than her own. Indeed, his interrogatories, though they did not immediately rouse the old woman from her lethargy, served the purpose of interrupting and distracting her thoughts a little; so that she, by and by, woke up, and recovered herself so far as to look round her, and perceive she was not alone on the porch. She surveyed the young man very earnestly, until, at last, tears gathered in her eyes, and her wheel stood still. The sudden ceasing of the sound at once broke the spell that enchained the painter's spirit; and looking up to Elsie, he displayed a countenance on which the turn of some darker thought had imprinted a character of sternness, and even fierceness. Elsie rose up, and stepping towards him, laid her palsied hand upon his shoulder, saying, in tones both solemn and impressively appealing, "Drive these thoughts from your bosom, and now depart. Why should you rest longer in this place? Your limb is sound, your strength is restored; and now begone, ere the calls of others, and the anger of your own heart, shall drive you into acts of blood, which, if you die not among them, you will live only to repent." "Fear me not, mother," said the youth, with a faint smile. "On this subject, I have told you my resolution before. I am, at the least, as good an American as yourself; and whatever may have been my original loyal and subjugating propensities, I have now not a wish, nay, not a thought, of playing the enslaver. Nothing on earth shall draw me into the matter you think of." "Ay, but revenge though!" said the widow, warningly. "You are dreaming of him whom you think you should hate, and thirsting perhaps for an opportunity to shed his blood?" "You are deceived, Elsie. I will never lift my hand against him, unless in self-defence. God is the avenger, and, one day, he _will_ avenge. I hate, Elsie, but I will not shed blood." "And why then do you remain? If _he_, whom neither knife nor bullet can destroy, looks upon you again, as surely he will, and that perhaps sooner than you dream of, he will entice you into his bloody schemes; and though he escape, yet will you perish." "Into his schemes I will not be enticed," said Herman; "and I rather hope, by argument and persuasion, to draw him from them."