thers sat as if fixed upon their
saddles for a few seconds, eyeing each other with looks of deadly hatred
and ferocity, and recalling the days and the strife of other years.

Though neither party mustered fifty, the onset was fierce and
furious--the struggle long and desperate; and, on each side, more than
half their original number lay dead or wounded on the ground. Amongst
the former were the seven sons of Jonathan Moor, and the three sons of
Walter Cunningham. The old men maintained a desperate combat with each
other, apart from the rest, until breathless and exhausted, both for a
few minutes paused, each holding the point of his sword towards the
other's breast; and they now looked once more in each other's face, and
again upon the ground, where they beheld the dead bodies of their sons.
Grief seemed to seek expression in redoubled rage--again their swords
clashed against each other, and gleamed in the sunbeams, rapid as the
fitful lightning. After a long and sore contention, in which both had
given and received wounds, they fell upon the ground together; but Moor
received his death-wound on the ground, and he fell to rise no more.

"I die!" he gasped, still grasping his antagonist by the breast--"I die,
Cunningham--with my children, whom I have led to death, I die! But,
remember, there is one left to avenge our deaths, and she will avenge
them seven-fold!"

Thus saying, his head fell back upon the ground, and he spoke not again.
Cunningham, disengaging himself from the dead man's grasp, went towards
the bodies of his children, and throwing himself upon the earth by their
side, he kissed their lifeless eyeballs, and mourned over them. His
grief was too intense, and his wounds too severe, to permit him
continuing with the army, and he returned to his estate near Simprin, to
watch over and protect his infant and only surviving son.

When the tidings were brought to Barbara Moor, that she, in one day, had
been bereaved of her husband and seven sons, and that the former had
fallen by the hand of Cunningham, the destroyer of her brother, she sat
and listened to the bearer of the evil tidings as one deprived of the
power of speech and motion. Her cheeks, her eyes, manifested no change;
but she sat calm, fixed, and entranced in the apathy of death. Her hands
remained folded upon her bosom, and her head moved not. The messenger
stood wondering and horror-struck, and twice he repeated his melancholy
tale; but the listener