“The clan,” said Lord Menteith, “with whom the maternal uncle of the M’Aulays had been placed in feud, was a small sept of banditti, called, from their houseless state, and their incessantly wandering among the mountains and glens, the Children of the Mist.  They are a fierce and hardy people, with all the irritability, and wild and vengeful passions, proper to men who have never known the restraint of civilized society.  A party of them lay in wait for the unfortunate Warden of the Forest, surprised him while hunting alone and unattended, and slew him with every circumstance of inventive cruelty.  They cut off his head, and resolved, in a bravado, to exhibit it at the castle of his brother-in-law.  The laird was absent, and the lady reluctantly received as guests, men against whom, perhaps, she was afraid to shut her gates.  Refreshments were placed before the Children of the Mist, who took an opportunity to take the head of their victim from the plaid in which it was wrapt, placed it on the table, put a piece of bread between the lifeless jaws, bidding them do their office now, since many a good meal they had eaten at that table.  The lady, who had been absent for some household purpose, entered at this moment, and, upon beholding her brother’s head, fled like an arrow out of the house into the woods, uttering shriek upon shriek.  The ruffians, satisfied with this savage triumph, withdrew.  The terrified menials, after overcoming the alarm to which they had been subjected, sought their unfortunate mistress in every direction, but she was nowhere to be found.  The miserable husband returned next day, and, with the assistance of his people, undertook a more anxious and distant search, but to equally little purpose.  It was believed universally, that, in the ecstasy of her terror, she must either have thrown herself over one of the numerous precipices which overhang the river, or into a deep lake about a mile from the castle.  Her loss was the more lamented, as she was six months advanced in her pregnancy; Angus M’Aulay, her eldest son, having been born about eighteen months before.—­But I tire you, Captain Dalgetty, and you seem inclined to sleep.”

“By no means,” answered the soldier; “I am no whit somnolent; I always hear best with my eyes shut.  It is a fashion I learned when I stood sentinel.”

“And I daresay,” said Lord Menteith, aside to Anderson, “the weight of the halberd of the sergeant of the rounds often made him open them.”

Being apparently, however, in the humour of story-telling, the young nobleman went on, addressing himself chiefly to his servants, without minding the slumbering veteran.

“Every baron in the country,” said he, “now swore revenge for this dreadful crime.  They took arms with the relations and brother-in-law of the murdered person, and the Children of the Mist were hunted down, I believe, with as little mercy as they had themselves manifested.  Seventeen heads, the bloody trophies of their vengeance, were distributed among the allies, and fed the crows upon the gates of their castles.  The survivors sought out more distant wildernesses, to which they retreated.”