nd the spoilers were busy tearing
the clothes from the victims of war and feudal ambition, with as much
indifference as if they had not been of the same species, and themselves
exposed, perhaps to-morrow, to the same fate.

"Does the sight please you?" said M'Aulay.

"It is hideous!" said Annot, covering her eyes with her hands; "how can
you bid me look upon it?"

"You must be inured to it," said he, "if you remain with this destined
host--you will soon have to search such a field for my brother's
corpse--for Menteith's--for mine---but that will be a more indifferent
task--You do not love me!"

"This is the first time you have taxed me with unkindness," said Annot,
weeping. "You are my brother--my preserver--my protector--and can I then
BUT love you?--But your hour of darkness is approaching, let me fetch my
harp--"

"Remain," said Allan, still holding her fast; "be my visions from heaven
or hell, or from the middle sphere of disembodied spirits--or be they,
as the Saxons hold, but the delusions of an over-heated fancy, they
do not now influence me; I speak the language of the natural, of the
visible world.--You love not me, Annot--you love Menteith--by him you
are beloved again, and Allan is no more to you than one of the corpses
which encumber yonder heath."

It cannot be supposed that this strange speech conveyed any new
information to her who was thus addressed. No woman ever lived who could
not, in the same circumstances, have discerned long since the state of
her lover's mind. But by thus suddenly tearing off the veil, thin as it
was, Allan prepared her to expect consequences violent in proportion to
the enthusiasm of his character. She made an effort to repel the charge
he had stated.

"You forget," she said, "your own worth and nobleness when you insult so
very helpless a being, and one whom fate has thrown so totally into
your power. You know who and what I am, and how impossible it is that
Menteith or you can use language of affection to me, beyond that of
friendship. You know from what unhappy race I have too probably derived
my existence."

"I will not believe it," said Allan, impetuously; "never flowed crystal
drop from a polluted spring."

"Yet the very doubt," pleaded Annot, "should make you forbear to use
this language to me."

"I know," said M'Aulay, "it places a bar between us--but I know also
that it divides you not so inseparably from Menteith.--Hear me, my
beloved Annot!--leave this sc