e eyes, which knew so
well how to be at once both bold and timid.

"Forgiven my madness?" he murmured.

Having nothing to say, she still said it eloquently. Volney bowed himself
out of the room, nodded carelessly to me as he passed, touched Macdonald
on the arm with a pleasant promise to attend the obsequies when the
Highlander should be brought to London for his hanging, lounged elegantly
through the crowded assembly hall, and disappeared into the night.

CHAPTER IX

BLUE BONNETS ARE OVER THE BORDER

Next day I enrolled myself as a gentleman volunteer in Lord Balmerino's
troop of horse-guards, and was at once appointed to a lieutenancy. In
waiting for reinforcements and in making preparations for the invasion
three weeks were lost, but at last, on the 31st of October, came the order
for the march. We had that day been joined by Cluny Macpherson at the head
of his clan Pherson, by Menzies of Shien, and by several other small
bodies of Highlanders. All told our force amounted to less than five
thousand men, but the rapidity of our movements and the impetuous
gallantry of the clansmen made the enterprise less mad than it appeared
upon the face of it. Moreover we expected to be largely reinforced by
recruits who were to declare themselves as we marched south.

It may be guessed that the last hour of leisure I had in the city was
spent with Aileen. Of that hour the greater part of it was worse than
lost, for a thickheaded, long-legged oaf of an Ayrshire laird shared the
room with us and hung to his chair with dogged persistency the while my
imagination rioted in diverse forms of sudden death for him. Nor did it
lessen my impatience to know that the girl was laughing in her sleeve at
my restlessness. She took a malicious pleasure in drawing out her
hobnailed admirer on the interesting subject of sheep-rot. At last, having
tormented me to the limit of prudence, she got rid of him. To say truth,
Miss Aileen had for weeks held me on the tenter-hooks of doubt, now in
high hope, far more often in black despair. She had become very popular
with the young men who had declared in favour of the exiled family, and I
never called without finding some colour-splashed Gael or broad-tongued
Lowland laird in dalliance. 'Twas impossible to get a word with her alone.
Her admirers were forever shutting off the sunlight from me.

Aileen was sewing on a white satin cockade, which the man from Ayrshire,
in the intervals between th