Greyslaer - v. 2 Author:Charles Fenno Hoffman Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ORE YSL AER; A ROMANCE OF THE MOHAWK, BOOK SECOND. CONTINUED. CHAPTER VIII. THE WANDERERS. " When those we love are absent—far away, When those... more » we love have met some hapless fate, How pours the heart its lone and plaintive lay, As the wood-songster mourns her stolen mate ! Alas! the summer bower—how desolate ! The winter hearth—how dim its fire appears ! While the pale memories of by-gone years Around our thoughts like spectral shadows wait." Park Benjamin. " She led him through the trackless wild Where noontide sunbeam never blazed."—Spbartje. The glad spring has tome again over the land, and nowhere do the flowers spring more joyfully beneath her flushing footsteps than in the lovely valley of the Mohawk. Here the seeds of civil discord lie crushed, or, at least, inert, at present. The storm of war has rolled oft" to distant borders ; or if, indeed, it be lowering near again, its terrors are un- felt, because unseen. The husbandman has once more driven his team afield, free from the apprehension that he may return to find a blazing rooftree and slaughtered household when the close of day shall relieve him from his toils. The wife once more has joyed to see him go forth whistling on his way, confident that the protector of her children will not fall slaughtered in the ploughshare's furrow, but return to glad her eyes at nightfall. Alas ! these simple people dream not that the present calm is but a breathing-spell in the terrible struggle which, ere it pass away, shall print every cliff of this beautiful region with a legend of horror, and story its romantic stream with deeds of fiendish crime. Clad in the deepest mourning, the orphan heiress of the Hawksnest sits by the trellised window, gazing out upon the lovely fields, of which the supposed...« less