if you want a third, there is
none but ould Harry, as I know of, that can match ye for a brent broo!'

As the girl muttered this exclamation, and hastened out of the room,
Herries entered. He stopped on observing that I had looked again to the
mirror, anxious to trace the look by which the wench had undoubtedly
been terrified. He seemed to guess what was passing in my mind, for, as
I turned towards him, he observed, 'Doubt not that it is stamped on your
forehead--the fatal mark of our race; though it is not now so apparent
as it will become when age and sorrow, and the traces of stormy passions
and of bitter penitence, shall have drawn their furrows on your brow.'

'Mysterious man,' I replied, 'I know not of what you speak; your
language is as dark as your purposes!'

'Sit down, then,' he said, 'and listen; thus far, at least, must the
veil of which you complain be raised. When withdrawn, it will only
display guilt and sorrow--guilt followed by strange penalty, and sorrow
which Providence has entailed upon the posterity of the mourners.'

He paused a moment, and commenced his narrative, which he told with the
air of one, who, remote as the events were which he recited, took
still the deepest interest in them. The tone of his voice, which I have
already described as rich and powerful, aided by its inflections the
effects of his story, which I will endeavour to write down, as nearly as
possible, in the very words which he used.

'It was not of late years that the English learned that their best
chance of conquering their independent neighbours must be by introducing
amongst them division and civil war. You need not be reminded of the
state of thraldom to which Scotland was reduced by the unhappy wars
betwixt the domestic factions of Bruce and Baliol, nor how, after
Scotland had been emancipated from a foreign yoke by the conduct and
valour of the immortal Bruce, the whole fruits of the triumphs of
Bannockburn were lost in the dreadful defeats of Dupplin and Halidon;
and Edward Baliol, the minion and feudatory of his namesake of England,
seemed, for a brief season, in safe and uncontested possession of the
throne so lately occupied by the greatest general and wisest prince in
Europe. But the experience of Bruce had not died with him. There
were many who had shared his martial labours, and all remembered the
successful efforts by which, under circumstances as disadvantageous as
those of his son, he had achieved the libe