Original: For a time, the marauders seemed to hold aloof from the city itself, but as they kept on their course of pillage their appetite for plunder was whetted, and they looked with avaricious eyes at the city on the hill.
Simplified: For a time the marauders seemed to hold aloof from the city itself, but as they kept on their course of pillage their appetite for plunder was whetted, and they looked with avaricious eyes at the city on the hill.