From Captain Loring he also learned some of the particulars of those bustling events, which had taken place during the evening of his insensibility. He was much struck with the strange transformation of the sanctimonious Nehemiah Poke into no less a personage than the refugee and assassin, Oran Gilbert, and was very curious to hear the particulars of his escape. They were told in a moment: the pursuers, headed by Lieutenant Brooks, (young Falconer having proceeded on his journey with his sister, and the Captain, much the worse for his gallop, having been forced to return to the Hall,) had followed across the river, and continued the search until nightfall rendered it useless to prolong it. They had, at one time, been close upon the fugitive's heels, having lighted upon a pedler, (not, however, Mr. John Green, the Indian trader, who was safely lodged at the time in the wounded man's chamber,) to whom the pretended preacher had sold his old gray horse, or exchanged it for a better; and from this man they obtained instructions, which put them in good hopes for awhile of coming up with him. Night, however, fell upon them, and the Lieutenant returned to the right bank of the river, to rejoin his friend and Miss Falconer, committing the whole charge of the pursuit to his volunteers, from whom the fugitive escaped, having baffled them completely. As for Mr. Green himself, he left the little inn betimes on the morning after the accident, and was seen no more. In regard to the outrage upon Colonel Falconer, Herman was informed that it had been committed in a mode especially daring and audacious. He was entertaining certain gay and distinguished guests at his villa on the Schuylkill, and had stepped for a moment, in search of certain papers, to a little pavilion, which he had caused to be fitted up as a study, not sixty paces from the house, where he was presently found weltering in his blood by the guests, whom his sudden shrieks had drawn to the place. The assassin had already vanished, having added robbery, as Captain Loring averred, to murder. The sufferer had, however, recognised his well-known visage, and in the course of the following day some traces of him were discovered. It was found, at least, that a man answering the description had stolen a horse from a neighbouring farmer; and upon this horse, or one very like him, Mr. Nehemiah Poke, the parson, had been seen wending his way up the Delaware; and as no one knew or had ever before heard of this reverend gentleman, it was at once supposed that the assassin had assumed the character as a disguise. Before this second discovery had been made, a courier, whom the Captain stumbled upon in the village, was despatched to Hawk-Hollow, to recall Miss Falconer to the city. His intelligence therefore, though it caused the Captain to arrest the true offender, was not sufficient to legalize the capture, especially when this was opposed so strongly by the zealous