rotection--where is my son, my little Harry? Does he live?--where
shall I find him?"

"As I live," replied Susan, "I cannot tell. There are but two know
concerning him--and that is the king and his wife Elspeth; and there is
but one way of discovering anything respecting him, which is by crossing
Elspeth's loof, that she may betray her husband: and she would do it for
revenge's sake, for an ill husband has he been to her, and in her old
days he has discarded her for another."

"And where may she be found?" inquired Clennel, earnestly.

"That," added Susan, "is a question I cannot answer. She was with the
people in the glen to-day, and was first to raise the laugh when your
dog fastened its teeth in the flesh of your ain bairn. But she may be
far to seek and ill to find now--for she is wi' those that travel fast
and far, and that will not see her hindmost."

Deep was the disappointment of the laird when he found he could obtain
no tidings of his son. But, at the intercession of his daughter (whose
untutored mind her fond mother had begun to instruct), Susan was freely
pardoned, promised protection from her tribe, and again admitted as one
of the household.

I might describe the anxious care of the fond mother, as, day by day,
she sat by her new-found and lovely daughter's side, teaching her, and
telling her of a hundred things of which she had never heard before,
while her father sat gazing and listening near them, rejoicing over
both.

But the ray of sunshine which had penetrated the house of Clennel was
not destined to be of long duration. At that period a fearful cloud
overhung the whole land, and the fury of civil war seemed about to burst
forth.

The threatening storm did explode; a bigoted king overstepped his
prerogative, set at nought the rights and the liberties of the subject,
and an indignant people stained their hands with blood. A political
convulsion shook the empire to its centre. Families and individuals
became involved in the general catastrophe; and the house of Clennel did
not escape. In common with the majority of the English gentry of that
period, Clennel was a stanch loyalist, and if not exactly a lover of the
king, or an ardent admirer of his acts, yet one who would fight for the
crown though it should (as it was expressed about the time) "hang by a
bush." When, therefore, the parliament declared war against the king,
and the name of Cromwell spread awe throughout the country, and when
som