in memorial of her
murdered brother."

"I fear no omens," said Annot, smiling through her tears; "and nothing
coming through the hands of my two patrons," so she was wont to call
Lord Menteith and Allan, "can bring bad luck to the poor orphan."

She put the ring on her finger, and, turning to her harp, sung, to a
lively air, the following verses of one of the fashionable songs of
the period, which had found its way, marked as it was with the quaint
hyperbolical taste of King Charles's time, from some court masque to the
wilds of Perthshire:--

"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