But harmless or not as his intentions might have been, it is certain that the fear of them drove the unhappy Catherine to desperation, and filled another, now fast approaching, with the most dreadful alarm. This was Hyland Gilbert, who, hearing her cries from afar, came rushing up in time to see her, in the dull light of the moon, drop on her knees before the volunteer, beseeching him, in tones that might have melted a heart of stone, to have pity on her. "Villain! you die!" cried Hyland; and leaping from his horse, and rushing forward, he clapped a pistol to his ear, and drew the trigger. It flashed in the pan; but before Sterling could take advantage of the failure, the young man dashed it in his face, and drew another. "Hell and darkness!" cried Sterling, furiously, "young malapert, I will twist your neck." And seizing him by the throat, he cast him violently to the earth. Of a joyous, and even good-humoured temperament, there was yet a spice of devilish vindictiveness in the man's breast; and while boiling under the indignity of the blow, and smarting with rage at such high-handed interference in his humours by a pragmatic boy, he did not fail to remember that this was not the first time he had been baffled by him during the night. Besides, he was inflamed with liquor, which was enough of itself to goad him into any act of vengeance. But he was not destined, that night, to shed the blood of Hyland Gilbert. The shrieks of Catherine had been heard by others as well as her unhappy lover, and the flash of the pistol hastened them to the spot, where he lay struggling in the grasp of Sterling. A hand more mighty than his own was soon laid upon Sterling's neck, and as he was lifted aloft, and then tossed among the flints, like some mean but vicious beast, which the hunter disdains to kill with a weapon, he heard the voice of the tory captain exclaim, "What, you dog! touch your officer, and a sick man!--What means all this, Hyland? What! has he harmed the girl? If he have but touched her with a finger----Paugh!--Away with you, men! why stand you here gaping? On, and quickly." The party rode on, leaving, however, besides the group already in front, one man who led the horse on which Catherine had been mounted before. The refugee cast a look to the maiden,--she was sobbing in the arms of his brother. He strode to Sterling and assisted him to rise, not however without saying, with the sternest accents of a voice always savage, "But that heaven, or some other power, has made me to-night cold to blood, I should strike you, villain, where you stand!" "You may do it," said the other, with great tranquillity. "Take your fill to-night; we will run up the reckoning at another time." "How, drunken fool! do you threaten me!" "Faith, not I. Henceforth, I am a man of peace--that is, when we have played the play out. You're a hard manager--but, now I remember, we are not on the boards! We will forget and forgive."