village of Largs was in those days, could be of much service to a gallant in the capital. Hughoc indeed might have been well spared, had not his master privately resolved in his own mind to make some figure at Court, and thought he could do it better by the attendance of a brisk and handsome page, than by the admonitory presence of his graver squire; for Baldy had, among other distinguished virtues, innumerable good advices to give on all occasions; but his master, with the lightheadedness of a young mind, did not much relish the idea of riding the streets with Wisdom at his elbow.

Father Jerome was the first who mounted; he was out at the gate, and a good half hour on his journey, before Southennan was disentangled from the advices and benedictions of his mother. Hughoc also was timeously on horseback, but did not venture to advance before his master; he only curvetted his horse round the court for the amusement of the maids, and replied to their jeers and laughter as if he had been already a victor among them. The sedate Baldy had, with his characteristic circumspection, fastened his own horse by the bridle to the ring at the hall door, and walked his master's noble and well caparisoned gelding, as proud as the horse itself a little troubled in mind that the laird should let so much of the cool of the morning slip away.

At last Southennan made his appearance; the mirth of Hughoc was instantly hushed, and, winking to the women, he retired to the opposite side of the court, to allow room for his master to pass first through the gate. The laird bounded into the saddle, and soon made his exit, followed by Baldy, who, albeit his years, sprung upon his horse with an air that would have done credit to the agility of a younger man. Hughoc followed him out of the court-yard, waving his bonnet in silence, with a look of expressive drollery, to the household and sorners as he passed.

CHAPTER III.

"How sweet these solitary places are!
How wantonly the wind blows through the leaves,
And courts and plays with 'em.

-Hark! how yon purling stream

Dances and murmurs; the birds sing softly too."

THE PILGRIM.

THE progress of Southennan and his men over the moors was slow. All traces of the road they took have long since been obliterated by the heath, if even then road it could be called, though it had been used from time immemorial, being the track of communication between the eastern and western parts of the kingdom and the Hebrides. It led from Portincross Castle, which stands under the promontory, beyond West Kilbride, not only to Edinburgh but to the Queen's-ferry. Some antiquaries say it was the road by which many of the ancient Scottish Kings were conveyed from Scone to the "store-house" of their ancestors in Iona.

On leaving his own gate, Southennan, following the route which Father Jerome had taken, passed southward to Kilbride, where, turning to the left inland, he proceeded over the hills and moors towards Paisley. His intention was to halt there the first night.

Had there been any choice in his option, he could not have chosen a more dreary course. After having ascended the hills, and so far declined behind them as to lose sight of Arran, and the dark mountains of Argyle, he came upon a wide, silent, and sullen heath, pathless in every direction save that in which the road lay. The road itself was more like the stony channel of a dried up brook than a highway. The hand of man had nothing to do in its formation; it was made by the hoofs and feet of the travellers.

Yet is that sullen solitude, in the sportsman's season, not without beauty or interest. The heath presented one rich and splendid carpet of purple; and Hughoc, for lack of cross-bow, snapped with his fingers at the grouse and other game, which rose on the right and left of their path, as they rode easily along.

When the cavalcade started the morning was bright and beautiful; a few thin feathery vapours, more like sun-gilded snowflakes than clouds, floated at rest in the azure, so high aloft that they had the effect of making the welkin appear as if it had been expanded into unusual spaciousness. The winds were asleep in the hollows of the moorland, but a soft western breeze rippled the distant sea, and made it flicker in the sunshine, while the gentle waves, as they spread in placid undulations on the sunny sands of Ardrossan bay, heard afar off, were musical in their murmurs.

To Southennan, whose mind was apt in delicate fancies, the sound, as it rose, softened by the distance, seemed like the churm of the mermaid, when she sits on the rock combing her green tresses, and wiling the young adventurer with the flatteries of the summer sea. He did not, it is true, confidently believe in the existence of these fallacious syrens; he only cherished the fancy of it, because it served as it were to people the void between the beings of the airy element and the unknown creatures which inhabit the depths of the deep; for Father Jerome had explained to him, that the mythology of the mermaids was but a pleasant impersonation of rocks and shallows in a murmuring calm, when the emotion of the softly rolling swell causes the tangle which hangs on them to oscillate to and fro, like the ringlets of a maiden when she combs her hair.

But as he proceeded over the dismal heath, these gay fables, which took their being in his imagination from the influence of the sunshine on the water, and the foreheads of the hills, gladdened by the morning light, were darkened with reflections of a duller hue.

Without being superstitious, beyond the ordinary credulity of the age, the mind of Southennan was delicately susceptible of impressions from the aspect and colouring of surrounding objects. His spirits often received their tone more from external circumstances than from any innate buoyancy or consttutional thoughtfulness.

As he ascended the height above Kilbride, when all the gorgeous assemblage of mountains and headlands, and the bright waters of the extensive firth, lay in the glory of the morning, he not only indulged his fancy in cheerful hopes and radiant anticipations, but encouraged the boy to sing, who had, unconsciously, commenced a ditty of the olden time. But as they rode farther into the desert of the heath, Hughoc obeyed the saddening genius of the solitude, and of his own accord

suspended his song, while Baldy, symphonious to the wilderness, soon after began to lift up his lonely voice with an ancient ballad, describing a battle field in the moonlight, with widows wailing among the slain, seeking for those they had loved --and lost. As the day advanced, the soft and breathing air freshened into a breeze, which swept the heath with a sound like that of rushing water.

The road happened to turn suddenly into a shallow hollow, in which this sound was not heard, nor the breeze felt, and every thing was still. The travellers halted, for their plunge into this silence threw a momentary awe upon their spirits. Baldy forgot his ballad, and his master, clapping spurs to his horse, rode on as if excited by some prompting of resolution to escape from that dumb and dreary place.

They had not, however, proceeded far, when they again were all iuduced to halt; the sound of a deep solemn voice chanting one of the canticles of the mass rose before them. Baldy crossed himself, and took off his bonnet, making a sign to the boy to do the same: the Laird looked back to them and said:

It

"It is Father Jerome, he is resting and waiting for us." The old man had dismounted near a spring, by the side of which two large stones had been rolled by some benevolent traveller, for seats to those who might come after him. was in a sylvan nook of the little valley; for miles, on all sides, only the brown and barren heather was to be seen; but here a margin of grass, bright and green, surrounded the well, and a few hazel and brambles hung over it.

Father Jerome invited Southennan to alight, as they could hardly expect to meet within the moors a fitter place for refreshing themselves and their horses. The laird acceded to the invitation, and Baldy and Hughoc also dismounted, and the store basket of Abigail was placed on the ground.

While Father Jerome and Southennan were enjoying their breakfast, the boy led his own horse down along the little rill which flowed from the spring, on the edge of which a fringe of verdure meandered through the heath, until it was lost in a strip of meadow, the border of the Shaws water, a considerable stream which there crosses the moor. Baldy peevishly complained of the boy's thoughtlessness in not taking the mule, or another of the horses with him; but he had not long indulged this humour, when Hughoc, who had disappeared behind a knoll, was seen re-mounted coming back at the gallop, in evident alarm and consternation.

CHAPTER IV.

"A frame of adamant, a soul of fire,

No dangers fright him, and no labours tire."

JOHNSON.

In the mean time Southennan and Father Jerome, taking no heed of their attendants, were making such incisions as blunt knives could accomplish on the dried beef, and teeth could inflict on the oatmeal bannocks with which Abigail Cuninghame had plentifully supplied their basket. Hughoc, however, as soon as he came up to Baldy, began to relate to him something very wonderful. His expanded eyes and distended nostrils indicating, as much as the vehemence of his gestures and earnest voice, that he had made some important discovery, at least that he deemed it such.

The young laird, who had observed his gesticulations, directed the chaplain's attention to the expressive pregnant looks of the boy. In the same instant that the holy father turned his head to regard him, Hughoc uttered a cry, and Baldy started, turning his eyes eagerly towards the bushes which overhung the spring where Southennan and the priest were taking their refreshment.

Southennan sprang hastily to his feet, but the old man, being much heavier, moved slowly round, and, laying his hands upon the stone on which he had sat, raised himself leisurely.

On the top of the bank, behind the bushes, a tall, swarthy, shaggy, and gaunt figure, with a cross-bow in his hand and a quiver of arrows on his shoulder, appeared. He was also armed with a staff in his grasp, almost as tall as a spear. It had a sharp, dirk-like point, fastened by a rude mass of iron, rayed with iron spikes, and a hook attached to it, a dreadful weapon, either for stroke or pull.

This rough, weather-beaten outlaw wore his vest and collar open. His neck was bare, of a bronze colour, and his breast was as shaggy as the bosom of a wolf; his locks were matted and knotty, and he wore an iron scull-cap, which seemed, above the tufty mass of his dark and grissled hair like the shaven scalp of an uncouth anchorite. His vest, which had VOL. I.-2