st at his daughter and then at
me; and after a pause of contending emotions, rose, laid her across
the pommel, placed his foot in the stirrup, and turning to me said, "I
am embarrassed by many circumstances--take my blessings for this day's
help--and forget us."

"I can never forget."

"Then take this trifling remembrance." He pulled a ring from his
finger and handed it to me; threw himself into the saddle; placed his
daughter across his body, and crying, ere I could say a word for sheer
amazement, "Farewell, farewell!" and once more, with some emotion,
"Farewell, sir, and may God bless you!" put spurs to his horse, and
dashed off at full speed for a pass which leads into the wild country
of the Misty Braes.

Till they disappeared among the hills, I stood watching them from the
bank where they had left me, bare-headed, numbed, and indignant; with
the rain still pelting on me, and the ring between my fingers. It was
a costly diamond; I pitched it after him with a curse, and bent my
weary way towards Knowehead, a distance of full five miles, in a maze
of uncertainty and speculation. She had not told her name, and she
seemed to desire a concealment of her residence; her father's conduct
more plainly evinced the same motive; many of the heads of the
rebellion were still lurking with their families among the mountains
of Ulster; the only house in the direction they had taken, at all
likely to be the retreat of respectable persons, was the old Grange of
Moyabel; and it was the property of a gentleman then abroad, but
connected with all the chief Catholic rebels in the North. All this
made me naturally conclude that these were some of that unhappy party;
and when I considered that both daughter and father had been riding
from different quarters to the same destination--for, as well as I
could surmise from her vague account of herself, she had left the
servant, behind whom she had come so far, to wait the arrival of her
father, who had promised to join them there--I was able to satisfy
myself of their being only on their way to Moyabel; and I therefore
determined not to create suspicion by making useless inquiries as to
the present family there, but to take the first opportunity of
judging for myself of the new comers. But how, after such a dismissal,
introduce myself? Here lay the difficulty, and beyond this I could fix
on nothing; so with a heavy heart I climbed the hill before my
kinsman's house, and presented myself at