While he lay in this dangerous condition, the fierce Oran, whose bosom yearned over him as the youngest, and, after himself, the last of his father's children, read the secrets of his spirit; and, seeing no other means of saving his life, he formed, so soon as the sudden return of Catherine to the valley appeared to render the scheme feasible, the bold resolution of carrying her off, and thus defeating the only scruples in the way of Hyland's happiness. His own heart was a rock, and he smiled grimly as he thought of the affection of woman; but he had learned to love his brother, and knew that the passion he derided was consuming his spirit within him. "I will give him his gew-gaw puppet," he muttered, as he sat one night watching by Hyland's couch--(it was a bed of fern spread on a rock, on the naked hills, with only a thatch of hemlock boughs to shelter him from winds and dews, and a fire in the open air to light the wretched den:) "I will give him his wish.--He mutters her name in his sleep, and he sobs as he speaks it. Poor fool! he said true--he is unfit for this life of the desert, and his heart is warm to all God's creatures. Why should I seek to make it as fierce and bitter as my own? Let him to the island again, and the girl with him--it will be better: he was made to be happy." When he first announced his scheme to Hyland, the youth, to his surprise, strongly and vehemently opposed it, as being a violence and wrong not only to Catherine, but to himself: but when the news was brought him that the wedding-day was fixed and nigh at hand, and he saw that he must act now or never, his resolution and feelings experienced a sudden change. He thought over again and again all the evidences he had traced of Catherine's aversion to the union, and he added the few and precious revealments of her regard for himself: he remembered her wild and broken expressions at that hour of parting which had made her acquainted with the depth of his love, and perhaps taught her more than she had dreamed before of the condition of her own: he pictured her in his imagination, the fair, the beautiful and the good, driven into the arms of one as incapable of appreciating her worth as he was undeserving her love: he thought of his peaceful island-home, and the paradise it would become, when she whom he adored should sit with him under its arbours of palms, or walk over its shelly beaches: he thought these things, and persuaded himself that fate called for, and heaven would sanction, the violence,--that he acted not so much for himself as for her,--and that she would forgive the friendly audacity that brought her release and happiness together.