"Haste, father, dear father!" cried Catherine, to whom the terrible scene of peril and suffering she had witnessed and almost shared, had given a new energy, and, indeed, a new nature; "haste, or the man will miss the path, and the young gentleman die. Or stay--I will climb the hill here, and run to the house for assistance, and Harriet will walk faster, and point out the way." "The path is broad, the wild fellow pursues it," cried Miss Falconer, giving the veteran the impulse of her own activity. "What could have brought the young man to the brook? What could have brought this wild barbarian? Nay, uncle, what could have brought yourself?" "Sam told me," muttered Captain Loring; and of a thousand broken and confused expressions that now fell from his lips, all that the maidens could understand, as they hurried him along, was that he had met one of his labourers at the park-gate, who had seen them take refuge in the wood, and was then engaged catching their ponies, which were running wildly about,--that he had instantly left his carriage, and was seeking them along the stream, when he heard the shriek of his daughter. Something else of much more importance, he seemed labouring to give utterance to; and this being nothing less than the fearful intelligence in relation to Colonel Falconer, which he knew not how to impart, his mind became so confounded betwixt fear of its effect upon the lady, indignation at the outrage, and the thousand other emotions which were distracting his breast, that the more he essayed to speak, the more mysterious became his expressions; so that the whole group had reached the door of the mansion, before a single suspicion of his object had entered the mind of either Miss Falconer or her friend. He mingled the oft-repeated name of her father with that of the dreaded Gilberts, and this again with Tom Loring's, and the painter's; now he burst into a frenzy of apprehension lest Catherine, whose garments were dripping with wet, and, in one or two places, spotted with blood from the wounds of Herman, should have suffered as many hurts as the youth himself, and now he fell into lamentations over the loss of 'that grand picture of Tom Loring dying!' which, it seemed not altogether improbable, death might prevent the poor painter ever attempting.