"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.