The wheel of Alice revolved with increased velocity, but she betrayed no inclination to yield to the prattling infirmity of age; though she, doubtless, of all persons in the country, was best informed on the subject now uppermost in the mind of the painter. He was in the mood, however, for extracting such information as he could; and after a moment's silence, he resumed, with a direct question, "That is Avondale Hall, is it not, good mother?" "It is Gilbert's Folly," replied the hostess, drily. "We know no other name.--There are some call it Falconer's Trump-card--but that is nothing." "Perhaps not," said the young man: "but who can tell better than yourself? Good mother Elsie--you must forgive me for being so familiar; but, in truth, I love the name--it was the name of my nurse, the first I learned to utter:--I have a great curiosity about these poor Gilberts; and, I was told, no one could inform me about them so well as yourself." "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"----