“If such be the case,” said Angus M’Aulay, “I must give orders to my followers, and make provision too for the safe conveyance of Annot Lyle; for an advance into M’Callum More’s country will be a farther and fouler road than these pinks of Cumbrian knighthood are aware of.”  So saying, he left the cabin.

“Annot Lyle!” repeated Dalgetty, “is she following the campaign?”

“Surely,” replied Sir Giles Musgrave, his eye glancing slightly from Lord Menteith to Allan M’Aulay; “we could neither march nor fight, advance nor retreat, without the influence of the Princess of Harps.”

“The Princess of Broadswords and Targets, I say,” answered his companion; “for the Lady of Montrose herself could not be more courteously waited upon; she has four Highland maidens, and as many bare-legged gillies, to wait upon her orders.”

“And what would you have, gentlemen?” said Allan, turning suddenly from the Highlander with whom he was in conversation; “would you yourselves have left an innocent female, the companion of your infancy, to die by violence, or perish by famine?  There is not, by this time, a roof upon the habitation of my fathers—­our crops have been destroyed, and our cattle have been driven—­and you, gentlemen, have to bless God, that, coming from a milder and more civilized country, you expose only your own lives in this remorseless war, without apprehension that your enemies will visit with their vengeance the defenceless pledges you may have left behind you.”

The Englishmen cordially agreed that they had the superiority in this respect; and the company, now dispersing, went each to his several charge or occupation.

Allan lingered a moment behind, still questioning the reluctant Ranald MacEagh upon a point in his supposed visions, by which he was greatly perplexed.  “Repeatedly,” he said, “have I had the sight of a Gael, who seemed to plunge his weapon into the body of Menteith,—­of that young nobleman in the scarlet laced cloak, who has just now left the bothy.  But by no effort, though I have gazed till my eyes were almost fixed in the sockets, can I discover the face of this Highlander, or even conjecture who he may be, although his person and air seem familiar to me.” [See Note ii.—­Wraiths.]

“Have you reversed your own plaid,” said Ranald, “according to the rule of the experienced Seers in such case?”

“I have,” answered Allan, speaking low, and shuddering as if with internal agony.

“And in what guise did the phantom then appear to you?” said Ranald.

“With his plaid also reversed,” answered Allan, in the same low and convulsed tone.

“Then be assured,” said Ranald, “that your own hand, and none other, will do the deed of which you have witnessed the shadow.”

“So has my anxious soul a hundred times surmised,” replied Allan.  “But it is impossible!  Were I to read the record in the eternal book of fate, I would declare it impossible—­we are bound by the ties of blood, and by a hundred ties more intimate—­we have stood side by side in battle, and our swords have reeked with the blood of the same enemies—­it is impossible I should harm him!”