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Glad rumours of the success which had finally
crowned the hunter Balt in his wild-wood quest
preceded the arrival of the popular young Max
among his old friends and neighbours. It were difficult
to define the emotions of Alida when the
news of his deliverance from captivity and death
first reached her ears. For, though joy and delight
for Greyslaer's escape first swallowed up all other
feelings, yet painful reflections succeeded, and
doubts and fears crept into her mind, to alloy this
generous burst of heartfelt sensibility.

She felt, she owned to herself, that, despite the
difference of years (and most slight was that disparity),
she could have loved her youthful worshipper.
But this thought had only been admitted into
her heart when she believed the barrier of the grave
was closed between them. How was it now with
her when Greyslaer lived? lived, while a barrier
more hideous even than that of the grave must keep
them apart for ever! But why dwell now upon
her past relations with Greyslaer? Why imbitter

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

her hours by musing upon their possible future position
toward each other?

Long months had intervened since the passionate
declaration of her almost boyish lover. There was
time enough even for him to have forgotten his
youthful fancy, or exchanged it for another, if some
fair face had presented itself to him when away
from her. Besides, had she not revealed that to
him which must crush all hope upon the instant?
Surely he could not have gone on feeding with vain
dreams of what might be his misplaced and most
unfortunate attachment—had he not consumed a
captive's long and lonely hours in such fruitless and
imbittered musings upon his baffled affections? His
sorrows must have been those only of a young and
ardent mind, that grieves to find itself cut off, in the
season of its vigour, from the paths of ambition
which men so love to tread; his dreams, only those
which will crowd into a mind fertile as his when
planning his escape from present evil—a prisoner's
dreams of home and friends, of free will and unrestricted
motion, and the bright world which, fresh
as ever, was to be enjoyed again.

Alida hoped that it might be so; yet, somehow,
she grew sad even in so hoping! A sensible and
modest mind is not merely flattered, but substantially
raised in its own estimation by the sincere and
unaffected attachment of another as well constituted
as itself, even when it cannot return the passion.
And though it can hardly, with precision, be said to
either grieve or humble us when that regard passes
away, yet there is something of sorrow, something
of humiliation, when we become assured of its decay.

In the mean time the presumed heiress of the
Hawksnest had not wanted for admirers, though
the natural imperiousness of her disposition

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

prepared a haughty rebuff for more than one who made
haste to address the beautiful orphan, even in her
first secluded months of mourning. The advances
of some of these suiters were well known in the
neighbourhood, and their supposed rejection, when
they successively withdrew from the field, became
very naturally the talk of the country people, who,
when Greyslaer's return from captivity was bruited
abroad, unanimously agreed that Fate had intended
that he should be the happy man. “Surely,” they
argued, “young Max would never take possession
of the estate which Miss Alida had so long enjoyed
as his nearest kinswoman, and the co-heir of Mad
Derrick, without offering first to make her his wife?
And where was the girl in the valley that would
refuse him? Proud and uppish as she was, old
De Roos, though a respectable man enough, and
the old friend of Sir William, was no such great
shakes, after all, that his daughter might turn up
her nose upon the only son of Colonel Greyslaer
that was.”

As for Max himself, it was agreed, without any
dissent, that he would seek a wife forthwith. He
was the last of his name; and, though sternly republican
in his political principles, democracy entered
not into his ideas of the social relations, and he was
believed to inherit from his stately old father sufficient
pride of family not to wish the name of Greyslaer
to expire with himself.

Max, in the mean while, wholly unconscious that
he and his affairs were furnishing the only subject
of gossip to the good wives of the neighbourhood,
now that the storm of war had rolled away from the
valley for a season, and left leisure for such harmless
themes, disappointed every one by the quietude
of his proceedings. A lawyer from the county
town calling upon Miss De Roos, informed her

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that Captain Greyslaer, being about to join his regiment,
which belonged to a brigade of volunteers that
had recently been draughted into the service of Congress,
he had no idea of taking possession of the
Hawksnest, and that Miss De Roos would add to
the obligations which Captain Greyslaer already
felt himself under to her late lamented father, if she
would continue to preside over an establishment
which must otherwise be broken up, and perhaps
fall to ruins; for the aged housekeeper was now too
infirm for the charge, and Captain Greyslaer was at
a loss what disposition to make of his other servants
in times so disturbed. “The captain,” said the
lawyer, looking round upon the ancient furniture,
“seems to have his heart bent upon keeping these
old sticks together, and there is no one but you,
madam, to whom he can look, as one feeling the
same sort of interest in the place as that which he
cherishes.”

The latter part of his agent's statement was enforced
by a note from Greyslaer, containing an eloquent
appeal to her on the score of their mutual
childish associations, and the impracticability of his
making any humane disposition of his black servants;
for manumitting them—a resource which had
suggested itself—would, in the existing state of the
country, be, in fact, the cruellest thing he could do,
there being now no employment for labourers of
that class.

Alida, who had not been left unprovided for by
her father, and was, therefore, not thus rendered
dependant upon the bounty of a distant kinsman,
who stood toward her in the delicate relation of a
discarded lover, scarcely hesitated in her determination.
She would remain beside the graves of her
father and sister, and consider herself as mistress
of the Hawksnest until Captain Greyslaer was

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

prepared to enter into his possessions; but it must be
as a tenant upon the same terms that her father had
held the property.

A month or more had elapsed after the adjustment
of this delicate matter, and Greyslaer, writing
weekly to her from Albany and New-York, whither
his professional duty had led him, managed always
in his letters to preserve a tone of easy friendliness,
such as had prevailed between them in the younger
days of their intercourse. This composure upon
paper, however, vanished entirely when at last they
met. The frank cordiality which Greyslaer assumed
was rather overdoing nature, as Alida thought
when she observed his rapid utterance and restless
motions; and Greyslaer was conscious that Alida
trembled with agitation when he smilingly proffered
the ordinary salute which fashion so inconsistently
permitted among the polite, considering the otherwise
ceremonious manners of that formal day.
They each seemed labouring under a continual exertion
to maintain the tone in which Greyslaer had
so happily commenced their correspondence, and
which had hitherto been successfully kept up between
them. But the restraint which either felt at
heart must soon have convinced them that they
mutually stood in a false position toward each other.

A famous modern sayer of apothegms tells us
that friendship may sometimes warm into love, but
love can subside into friendship never; and an ancient
one goes still farther by making hatred the
only change of which love is capable. As indifference
will often supervene to the most violent passion,
the creed of the last is manifestly absurd; but
there is something of truth in the proverb of the former;
for though the sentiment of friendship, a feeling
of the warmest and kindest regard, may indeed
exist where love has once been, yet the calm

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

relation of friends, with all its easy and pleasurable
frankness of intercourse, can hardly grow up between
two parties where love has once been the
source of interest to either, and that love has been
once avowed. There must be some lurking mortification,
if not some secret trace of sorrow, on one side
or the other; a jealousy of mutual respect, a quickness
to take offence, and, above all, the mournful
memory of former passages, endeared only in recollection,
perhaps, by their being associated with the
halcyon season of youth and hope, but still endeared
to it; there must be this memory to come over
the spirit amid its gayest sallies, and make the society
of the one who has elicited them, saddening,
if not oppressive, to the mind for the moment.

What wonder, then, if Greyslaer's visits to the
Hawksnest were gradually intermitted. A character
so earnest as his cannot always find material
for conversation amid themes of passing interest,
while one that fills his whole soul is utterly forbidden;
for conversation with her, moreover, whose
presence unlocks the secret chambers of his mind,
and peoples it with thoughts that may not walk
abroad.

He had promised Alida never officiously to thrust
himself farther into her confidence; and he remembered
his promise, but the forced durance she had
suffered at the hands of Bradshawe was known to
him, and he burned to resolve his suspicions concerning
that dark and desperate man. He had
hoped, in his earlier visits, that their discourse might
some time lead to Alida's reposing that full confidence
in him which he persuaded himself was somehow
due to the truthfulness and steadfastness of his
attachment, under the changed form in which he
was determined she should view it. But the moment
did not come; and upon each succeeding visit

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

Greyslaer seemed farther from the hope of such a
revelation than ever. Alida, in fact, did not dream
of making it.

Whether it was that she did not consider Greyslaer
her young friend the most proper party to interest
himself about her affairs; whether she paled at
the peril to which Greyslaer her lover would be exposed
by the steps he might adopt upon receiving
the disclosure; whether she shrunk, with true female
delicacy, from the farther agitation of a subject
so painful, or whether she had proudly determined
to be herself the arbiter of her own destiny, it is impossible
to say. But while there are some circumstances
which diminish the force of the last supposition—
such as the present banishment of Bradshawe
from this region, and the change which
seems to have come over the character of Alida
after she came to realize the full extent of her family
bereavements—it is probable that all these considerations
swayed her by turns, and suggested the
reserve of conduct which was the result.

And now Captain Greyslaer has become noted
alike among his equals in rank and his superior officers
for his rigid and exclusive attention to his military
duties. He seldom goes beyond the limits of
the post where he is stationed. His visits to the
Hawksnest, which is only a few miles off, seem
gradually to have ceased altogether; and a book or
newspaper from New-York, with some pencilled remarks
upon the news it contains from the seat of
war, is, when transmitted through his orderly, the
only intercourse he holds with its inmates.

Alida—though other officers of the garrison
sought by assiduous attention to supply the place of
Greyslaer—Alida, it must be confessed, began soon
to miss his accustomed visits. The superior mental
accomplishments of Greyslaer, the student would

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with her have given him but slight advantage over
his military comrades; but the character of Greyslaer
the soldier, of Greyslaer the young partisan,
whose wild adventures and perilous escapes among
the Indians was the theme of every tongue, appealed
more forcibly to the romantic admiration of Alida;
and, apart from all tender associations of the
past, regarding him only in the light of an acquaintance
of the day, she would have felt an interest in
the society of Max that no other of his sex whom
she had hitherto known could inspire.

There might possibly, too, be something in the
altered aspect of Greyslaer which more or less affected
the light in which a woman's eye would regard
him, now that his cheek had lost its freshness
from hardship and exposure; and that almost boyish
air which characterized his appearance even in
early manhood, had been changed by more recent
habits of action, of command, and of self-reliance.

The mother who, welcoming her long-absent son,
sighs as she looks vainly in his features for those
gentler traits which graced the handsome stripling
with whom she parted, smiles the next moment with
inward pride at the sentiment of newly-awakened respect
with which she is somehow mysteriously inspired
toward her own offspring: she startles at the
altered modulations of his voice as heard at a distance:
she wonders at the changed cadence of his
footfalls, as his approaching step, which was ever
music to her ear, grows nearer: she marks his graver
and more even mien: she gazes upon the brow
where manhood has already stamped its lordly impress;
yet, even while leaning for counsel upon him
who so lately looked to her for care, can scarcely
realize the swift and silent change that is now so
fully wrought.

So had it been with Alida. Greyslaer was to her

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as a boy no more; and if her own feelings had not
taught her thus, the conviction must have been forced
upon her by the light in which, as she saw, he
was regarded by those far older than herself. His
opinions upon all subjects seemed to be quoted by
those who were his immediate associates; and she
heard continually of grave cases in which Greyslaer's
judgment was appealed to by members of the
Committee of Safety, and others charged with the
various clashing powers of the provisionary government
of the period. The friendship of such a man
she felt was to be valued, and she even acknowledged
to herself that, had not circumstances placed
an insurmountable barrier between them, Greyslaer—
judging him only by the character he had formed
for himself in the world—Max Greyslaer was the
man of all others to whom her proud and aspiring
heart would have been rendered up.

But, alas! what booted such knowledge now?
Of what avail was it that reason reluctantly at last
sanctioned the preference which a secret tenderness
suggested, when reason was wholly at war with the
indulgence of these partial feelings. Reason, though
she sustained with the one hand the judgment which
guided that partiality, pointed sternly with the other
to an abyss of hopelessness. Alida might love
Greyslaer, but she never could be his.

With minds of a gentler mould, or even with one
lofty as hers, if attempered by the sweet influences
of Religion, a quiet and uncomplaining resignation
would have been the alternative of one thus
weighed down by the hand of fate. But Alida,
though her fervid soul was in a high degree characterized
by that sentiment of natural piety which, existing
in almost every highly-gifted mind, is so often
mistaken for the deeper and more permanent principle
which alone deserves the name of true

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religion—Alida had never yet known that sober, solemn,
and holy conserving influence by whose aid alone,
the preacher tells us, we may possess our minds in
peace. She rebelled against the lot to which she
seemed doomed as a disappointed, if not broken-hearted
woman. She would struggle against the
blind pressure of circumstance, and war till the last
with the fate which only served to exasperate while
it overshadowed her spirit.

It is strange how, while most minds grow haughty,
exacting, and imperious from success, misfortune,
so far from bringing humility with it, produces
precisely the same effect in others; they seem to
harden in the struggle with sorrow, and grow insolent
as they gain knowledge of their own powers of
endurance.

“I'll go no more,” said Greyslaer one evening,
as, throwing himself dejectedly into the saddle, he
passed through the gate which opened upon the
grounds of the Hawksnest, and turned his horse's
head toward the garrison; “I'll go no more. Had
her reception been merely cold and formal after the
long interval I have ceased visiting her, I should not
have complained of such notice of my neglect; for
she, perhaps, never suspects the cause that keeps me
away. But those two fingers so carelessly accorded
to my grasp, with that light laugh as she turned
round in speaking to that group of idlers, even in
the moment that I was expressing my pleasure at
seeing her—pshaw! there are no sympathies between
that woman and myself; there never was,
there never can be any;” and he struck the rowels
into his horse almost fiercely, as, thus bitterly musing,
one angry thought after another chased through
his mind.

“And what if she is?” he exclaimed, reining up
suddenly again to a slower pace. “What if she is

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wayward, fretful, and exacting to me alone of all
other men? Forgetful of the devoted and all-absorbing
love I have borne her; forgetful of the feelings
which, save on that terrible night only, I have
always kept trained in obedience to what I deemed
her happiness. She never attempted to inspire this
misplaced and mistaken interest; she never lured
me on to the avowal; she never trifled with the emotions
that prompted it. What right have I to arraign
her conduct, to sit in judgment upon her manner
toward me? Her character is the same that I
have ever known it. Her manner toward me? Am
I, then, such an egotist that that is to change my estimation
of her? She does not love me, she cannot
love me; and if she did, is there not this hideous
bar between us? What care I, then, for the show
of interest, when the reality can never be indulged?
No! my part is taken—irretrievably taken, and I
would not recall my choice. For me there is no
fragment of happiness that I can save from the
wreck of the past, but I will still drift with her
wheresoever the sea of events may hurl us.”

It is well for us that it is only in very early life
that we are thus prodigal of our chances of happiness,
and willing to concentrate them all upon a single
issue. Alas! how soon do we learn, in maturer
years, to shift our interest from scheme to scheme;
to see wave after wave, upon which the bark of our
hopes has been upborne, sink from beneath it, until
the very one upon which it was about to float at last
triumphantly, strands us upon the returnless shores
of the grave!

But, though many a worldling has commenced his
experience of life with views hardly less romantic
than those of Max Greyslaer, his was not the mere
wayward devotedness of youth to its first sorrow.
The very constitution of his mind was of a loyal,

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

venerating kind; (for, deeply imbued as he was, by
the classic culture of his mind, with that ancient, intellectual
spirit of republicanism which had at once
determined his political position in the present civil
struggle, Greyslaer, under another system of education,
would probably have turned out almost a
bigoted royalist;) and the senitment which still attached
him to Alida was nearly akin to that which,
in another age and under other circumstances,
would have inspired his self-devotion to some dethroned
and expatriated prince, like him for whom
one of his immediate ancestors had suffered upon
the scaffold. Had he never declared his passion
for Alida, he might have succeeded in crushing it;
he would certainly have attempted to reason it
away the moment that he discovered that he must
love in vain; but, the avowal once made, he never
dreamed of withdrawing the adhesion he had thus
given in, much less of transferring his affections to
another. He had made an error of choice; a most
unhappy, a most cruel one; but still he would abide
by that choice, whatever consequences might accrue.
The part which Max Greyslear had thus
chosen would, in a rational point of view, become
only an ill-regulated, almost, we might say,
a half-besotted mind. Yet the weakness of choosing
such a part is precisely that which has dwarfed
the growth and distorted the otherwise noble proportions
of minds naturally the most masculine and
commanding.

But the feelings and reflections of Greyslaer, upon
which we have dwelt, perhaps, somewhat too minutely,
received a new direction at this moment, as
he heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs rapidly approaching
in an opposite course to that which he
was travelling. The speed of the coming horseman
seemed to announce that he was either fleeing

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from pursuit, or riding upon some errand of the utmost
urgency; and, ere Greyslaer could make out
the figure of the strange rider amid the darkness,
his conjectures as to his character were cut short
by an occurrence which may best be told in another
chapter.

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