"They met the fate they must have anticipated," said the Captain's daughter. "They perished, one by one, in different bloody conflicts; one fell at Wyoming, another at Tioga Point, where the combined forces of savages and refugees were routed by General Sullivan; Oran himself, with a fourth brother, was killed at the battle of Johnstown, near the Mohawk river, where another refugee leader, Walter Butler, not less blood-thirsty and famous, met a similar fate. Their death was terrible; they cried for quarter, being wounded and helpless; but the victors bade them 'Remember Wyoming, and Cherry-Valley,' two prominent objects of their cruelty, and killed them without mercy. Another, I have heard, was somewhere hanged as a spy; and these, with Hyland, killed as I mentioned before, and the youngest, deceased, if indeed he be deceased, in Jamaica, made up the whole seven sons, all of whom therefore died violent deaths. The eighth child,--the poor daughter,--undoubtedly sleeps under this rock; and there are none left to mourn her. The destruction of the family was dreadful and complete." CHAPTER VIII. Run! run! run! Quickly for a surgeon! Call watch, constable! raise the hue and cry! What's to be done? Why the devil don't you stir, John? This way, that way, every body fly! DON GIOVANNI. Thus ended the sketch of a story, imperfect, perhaps tedious and unsatisfactory, but still a necessary preliminary to the series of events that completes the tradition. A mere womanly curiosity was perhaps at the bottom of the nobler feeling with which Miss Falconer sought to excuse to herself the impropriety of urging the relation. From the first to the last, it was meted out to her reluctantly; and nothing but the command she had long since obtained over a character less firm and decided than her own, could have persuaded the Captain's daughter to breathe a syllable of it into ears, which, she could not but feel, ought not to be opened to it. Miss Falconer had, moreover, overrated her powers of scepticism; she had provoked the story, as men commonly provoke an argument,--that is, with a resolution not to be convinced; but like the logician, in many instances, when the discussion is over, her incredulity was sorely, though secretly, shaken, and nothing but her pride and strength of character checked the humiliating avowal. Some circumstances a delicate consideration for the feelings of her friend, and an unconquerable repugnance to speak more on the subject than could not be avoided, had prevented the Captain's daughter from relating. These would have thrown a still darker stain upon the character of Colonel Falconer. There was enough, however, said, to force one disagreeable conviction upon Harriet's mind; and this was, that, if her parent were even as guiltless of ingratitude and wrong as her fondest wishes