"Brother," said she, "if you really love Catherine, you may yet save her." "What! after confessing she loves another?" cried he, sulkily. "Now, Hal, for all your wisdom, you don't know me--I won't have her. Confess, indeed!" "No--she did not confess--I will explain. Perhaps 'twas only a dream;--it was in her sleep." "In her sleep!" cried Falconer, and then burst again into a roar of laughter. "In her sleep!" he ejaculated, giving way to a second peal. "Well! you have scared me with a vengeance!--But I forgive you--you have brought me to. Of all the cunning doctors in the world, give me yourself, Harry; you are infallible. And so she confessed in her sleep, poor soul, did she? Oh, Hal! Hal! Hal!" And here the capricious youth gave full swing to his merriment. "Thus it is," said his sister, impatiently; "one extreme or the other, ever. Listen, brother; for I am serious. Your wild habits have greatly weakened Catherine's affections. Another comes, in the meanwhile, with attractions, I will not say superior to your own, but perhaps every way equal, who ceases not, neither by day nor by night, to influence her imagination and engage her heart. Judge of his success, when you know that she has admitted him to intimacy, nay, to confidence; judge, when I tell you that she trembles at the sound of his voice, turns pale at the echo of his footsteps, blushes when he speaks, looks glad when he is by her, and weeps when he is absent,--and, finally, who hides the secret from her own waking thoughts, yet babbles his name over in her dreams, and sheds tears, and smiles with her tears, when she murmurs it. Is not such a man,--the object of such emotions, himself so passionately enamoured, that his visage betrays the thought of his bosom, even when he knows he is suspected and watched,--is not such a man a dangerous rival?" "Sister, you know better than myself," said Falconer, uneasily; "if _you_ think so"---- "I do, brother; I believe, that, this moment, without knowing it herself, Catherine's mind is dwelling upon your rival; and if he be not driven away, you will lose her." "Point him out to me, sister Harriet, and then, by"---- "No fighting! no fighting, brother!" cried Harriet, in some alarm, and speaking with eagerness. "Not a hair of the young man's head must be harmed; we have done him injury enough among us, perhaps, already. We must frighten him away: if I know him, we can legally expel him from the valley. Arrest, imprison him, banish him;--do any thing; but harm him not--that is, do him no harm with your own hands. If he have forfeited his life to the law, let the law take it. Now, brother, know your rival--it is the youngest brother of this dreadful Oran Gilbert." "Saints and devils!" cried Falconer, with vivacity, "a Hawk of the Hollow! and dare to love Catherine Loring?"