“Gaze not upon the stars, fond sage,
     In them no influence lies;
     To read the fate of youth or age,
     Look on my Helen’s eyes.

     “Yet, rash astrologer, refrain! 
     Too dearly would be won
     The prescience of another’s pain,
     If purchased by thine own.”

“She is right, Allan,” said Lord Menteith; “and this end of an old song is worth all we shall gain by our attempt to look into futurity.”

“She is wrong, my lord,” said Allan, sternly, “though you, who treat with lightness the warnings I have given you, may not live to see the event of the omen.—­laugh not so scornfully,” he added, interrupting himself “or rather laugh on as loud and as long as you will; your term of laughter will find a pause ere long.”

“I care not for your visions, Allan,” said Lord Menteith; “however short my span of life, the eye of no Highland seer can see its termination.”

“For heaven’s sake,” said Annot Lyle, interrupting him, “you know his nature, and how little he can endure—­”

“Fear me not,” said Allan, interrupting her,—­“my mind is now constant and calm.—­But for you, young lord,” said he, turning to Lord Menteith, “my eye has sought you through fields of battle, where Highlanders and Lowlanders lay strewed as thick as ever the rooks sat on those ancient trees,” pointing to a rookery which was seen from the window—­“my eye sought you, but your corpse was not there—­my eye sought you among a train of unresisting and disarmed captives, drawn up within the bounding walls of an ancient and rugged fortress;—­flash after flash—­platoon after platoon—­the hostile shot fell amongst them, They dropped like the dry leaves in autumn, but you were not among their ranks;—­scaffolds were prepared—­blocks were arranged, saw-dust was spread—­the priest was ready with his book, the headsman with his axe—­but there, too, mine eye found you not.”

“The gibbet, then, I suppose, must be my doom?” said Lord Menteith.  “Yet I wish they had spared me the halter, were it but for the dignity of the peerage.”

He spoke this scornfully, yet not without a sort of curiosity, and a wish to receive an answer; for the desire of prying into futurity frequently has some influence even on the minds of those who disavow all belief in the possibility of such predictions.

“Your rank, my lord, will suffer no dishonour in your person, or by the manner of your death.  Three times have I seen a Highlander plant his dirk in your bosom—­and such will be your fate.”

“I wish you would describe him to me,” said Lord Menteith, “and I shall save him the trouble of fulfilling your prophecy, if his plaid be passible to sword or pistol.”

“Your weapons,” said Allan, “would avail you little; nor can I give you the information you desire.  The face of the vision has been ever averted from me.”

“So be it then,” said Lord Menteith, “and let it rest in the uncertainty in which your augury has placed it.  I shall dine not the less merrily among plaids, and dirks, and kilts to-day.”