exhortations of Nehemiah, and the discreet remonstrances of the painter. When Captain Loring remembered the agency of Hunter in robbing him of his prey, he burst into a towering passion, and reproached and railed at him with as little ceremony as he would have done with his own son, or near kinsman. It was in vain that Herman pointed out the improbability of a wild hunter of the hills, like Oran Gilbert, being able to assume the character of a ranting preacher, and preserve it so well, and endeavoured to convince him, that, if Nehemiah were really not the assassin, he must be some other and some secret enemy. The Captain swore that Colonel Falconer had no other enemy in the world, and therefore, of course, Nehemiah, the parson, must be the identical Oran of the Hollow. This opinion he maintained with such fury, that the painter, if indeed he had no stronger reason for holding his tongue, did not choose to meet it with an argument derived from his own previous acquaintance with Nehemiah. He suffered the Captain to have his own way, and believe what he liked; and, in consequence, the Captain soon dropped the subject altogether, to take up another that now occupied his brain, almost to the exclusion of every other. This was the picture of the battle of Brandywine, and Tom Loring dying, the consideration of which, and of the painter's ability to execute it to his liking, was the main cause of the extraordinary affection he conceived for the youth. Another piece of information, which the young man obtained from the Captain, was an account of the agency of Miss Loring in his deliverance from the brook, and perhaps from death. He had turned upon her a despairing eye, at the moment when, as he was pitching over the fall, she had cast out the end of the shawl to him; but of this circumstance he had retained not the slightest recollection, and indeed, it is more than probable that his faculties were at that moment in a state of torpor. Not content with this deed of daring humanity (for if he had clutched upon the mantle, the chances were that she would have been jerked into the torrent after him,) she had plunged among the boiling eddies below, and thus preserved him from a second and perhaps greater peril, and all the time with imminent risk to herself. His emotions upon making this discovery, mingled surprise and admiration with the gentler sentiment of gratitude. "Is it possible," he cried, "that a young lady should have such spirit, such presence of mind, such courage?" "Adzooks!" said the Captain, setting the matter to rest at once, "isn't she _my_ daughter? By the lord, sir, when my son Tom was but a boy of ten years, he could trounce all the boys of the Brandywine of his own age, and two years older." "So heroic!" ejaculated the painter; "instead of committing me to my destiny, with a pathetic scream, to run at once to my assistance, like an angel, rather than a woman!"