“You told me,” answered M’Aulay, “that you would not marry Annot Lyle!—­False traitor!—­she now waits you at the altar.”

“It is you who speak false,” retorted Menteith.  “I told you the obscurity of her birth was the only bar to our union—­that is now removed; and whom do you think yourself, that I should yield up my pretensions in your favour?”

“Draw then,” said M’Aulay; “we understand each other.”

“Not now,” said Menteith, “and not here.  Allan, you know me well—­wait till to-morrow, and you shall have fighting enough.”

“This hour—­this instant—­or never,” answered M’Aulay.

“Your triumph shall not go farther than the hour which is stricken.  Menteith, I entreat you by our relationship—­by our joint conflicts and labours—­draw your sword, and defend your life!” As he spoke, he seized the Earl’s hand, and wrung it with such frantic earnestness, that his grasp forced the blood to start under the nails.  Menteith threw him off with violence, exclaiming, “Begone, madman!”

“Then, be the vision accomplished!” said Allan; and, drawing his dirk, struck with his whole gigantic force at the Earl’s bosom.  The temper of the corslet threw the point of the weapon upwards, but a deep wound took place between the neck and shoulder; and the force of the blow prostrated the bridegroom on the floor.  Montrose entered at one side of the anteroom.  The bridal company, alarmed at the noise, were in equal apprehension and surprise; but ere Montrose could almost see what had happened, Allan M’Aulay had rushed past him, and descended the castle stairs like lightning.  “Guards, shut the gate!” exclaimed Montrose—­“Seize him—­kill him, if he resists!—­He shall die, if he were my brother!”

But Allan prostrated, with a second blow of his dagger, a sentinel who was upon duty—–­traversed the camp like a mountain-deer, though pursued by all who caught the alarm—­threw himself into the river, and, swimming to the opposite side, was soon lost among the woods.  In the course of the same evening, his brother Angus and his followers left Montrose’s camp, and, taking the road homeward, never again rejoined him.

Of Allan himself it is said, that, in a wonderfully short space after the deed was committed, he burst into a room in the Castle of Inverary, where Argyle was sitting in council, and flung on the table his bloody dirk.

“Is it the blood of James Grahame?” said Argyle, a ghastly expression of hope mixing with the terror which the sudden apparition naturally excited.

“It is the blood of his minion,” answered M’Aulay—­“It is the blood which I was predestined to shed, though I would rather have spilt my own.”

Having thus spoken, he turned and left the castle, and from that moment nothing certain is known of his fate.  As the boy Kenneth, with three of the Children of the Mist, were seen soon afterwards to cross Lochfine, it is supposed they dogged his course, and that he perished by their hand in some obscure wilderness.  Another opinion maintains, that Allan M’Aulay went abroad and died a monk of the Carthusian order.  But nothing beyond bare presumption could ever be brought in support of either opinion.