morning heat, the delicious aromatic breath of moss and fern, of heath and briar, all had combined to create here a trysting-place of tender love, a spot for happy vows and pure delight, nay even for grateful prayer and solemn worship, rather than for any such scene as we have to describe. Why must it be that man's evil passions should so often defile and desecrate the loveliest of nature's hiding places, which she makes for a beauty and a joy to them, and not a shamble to be polluted with their own blood and that of their fellows?

Beauty, joy, colour, harmony, perfume, all the varied perfections of the little glade, hollowed out by the Creator's hand in the thickest depths of the murky forest as a temple to His own glory, were utterly lost upon those who entered it, panting like hounds upon the scent of their quarry; not less upon the senses of their condemned foe, bound hand and foot to a tree upon the side opposite to that by which they arrived; Alaster Cameron extended on the fern, guarding him with eye alert and hand on the long claymore which lay across his knees. The slight rustle of the underwood had been plain to the youth's practised ear for some seconds before it would have been perceptible to a less cultivated organ, and, when his brother and Allan sprang into the enclosure, he was already on his feet, but did not advance to meet them, remaining near the prisoner, as if his watchfulness were indispensable to prevent any attempt at flight.

Connuil and Johnstone came together across the platform of rock; and with the white foam on his

trembling lip, the lurid passion-glow on his rugged, swarthy brow, the soldier confronted the man who had slain his master.

The fanatic's gaze sustained his boldly.

"So, child of wrath! who has conquered now?" said the Covenanter with a sneer. “Thou art come with thy dogs of war to hunt for the precious life; can that buy back to earth the minion of hell, or redeem his forfeit soul from the gripe which has rent it away in his fulness of guilt?"

Alaster Cameron raised the hilt of his dirk to strike the prisoner over the mouth, but Johnstone arrested his arm. Too strong to heed either taunt or boast, was the dark fixed purpose which he was preparing to accomplish the executioner on the scaffold is not more callous to the criminal's imprecations and despair.

“Make your peace with Heaven, if you can, you have so much time as the shadow of yonder tree-trunk will take to reach the white stone."

66 What peace can a man need to make with a God in whose service he has lived, in whose honour he dies? Slay the body as ye have slain those of the saints, and given them to be meat to the fowls of the air-the soul defies ye! And I defy and curse and spit upon ye,

one and all!"

Connuil and Alaster stood a little apart; Johnstone folded his arms and did the same; the three counting and watching as the shade of the tree-stem to which Allan had pointed moved over blade after blade of grass, and touched frond after frond of emerald fern. The little hand's-breadth was all covered, then the blue

transparent darkness rose over the white fragment of stone and rested upon it. The prisoner's thin lips had not opened, nor his cold eye been lifted once towards Heaven, when his judges drew near and hemmed him in, their polished dirks glittering before him.

The sharp edge of steel suddenly severed the leathern thongs which had confined his wrists and ancles, and, instead of finding the three blades sheathed in his bosom, he stood up a free man.

Free! loosed from his bonds, with such a chance for his life as one man can have against three. The indomitable instinct of self-preservation which fanaticism itself could not so utterly quench as to destroy its vitality at such a crisis, made him, as the ties fell off his limbs, bound forward like an enraged panther-he was dashed back by a stout arm, and a dagger at his throat. He turned madly to the right, to the left— still with the same desperate energy; on the right and the left, as well as in front, the immoveable steel met him, on each side one of the Camerons, before him Allan Johnstone, either of them twice his match even if disarmed, behind, at three or four feet distance, a yawning precipice.

Why had they freed him? why not have taken his life at once if they wanted it? why not take it now? why did they linger, glaring on him with red flashing eyes and set teeth, but without bringing their weapons one quarter inch nearer to his breast? Those ferocious eyes fascinated him horribly, and the cold death-sweat burst from every pore as he saw that the daggers had not touched him, because, as by imperceptible lines

they encroached, he, with gaze riveted on his foes, and limbs moving heavily as those of one half turned to stone, was as steadily drawing back to the broken verge of the abyss.

Horrible! horrible! the axe, the cord, the poignard, torture itself, would have been easy to endure, he had braved them all, but to die by such a death, to be driven into it living and conscious, inch by inch, as it were by his own act and deed-murdered, yet well nigh a suicide! He threw a wild, shuddering glance behind him, and in his agony leaped upon Allan's dirk; in the struggle to tear it away, perhaps to use it on himself, maiming his hands frightfully. Foiled in this, he tried again to break the circle of steel, and again the three relentless avengers drew their tinckel closer and closer round the victim at bay. The yardwide space, fought for by hair's-breadths, was all swallowed up, and in an awful silence they paused with their feet on the very brink.

Then Allan Johnstone spoke.

"For my master-for my brother. My debt is paid."

Two dagger-strokes went with the names-deep, ferocious, but not mortal; that would have delivered the wretched victim from the worse horror which awaited him.

"Take my gift, murderer of our chief!"

"And mine, whelp of a Sassenach dog!"

The blood sprang over the dagger-hilts from four reeking wounds; the fanatic's face writhed into an appalling expression of hatred and despair, yet he stood

a moment erect. Then, like an uprooted tree, he reeled round, and, tossing his arms aloft, fell-fell-God only knows how long, how far, in that fearful chasm; one prolonged shriek piercing the rich, summer air, as the corpse (it could scarcely have retained life beyond the first few seconds) dashed headlong and mutilated over every jutting crag-staining with its blood every sharp, bare edge of rock-to disappear, a shapeless, mangled heap, amongst the massy woods, three hundred feet below.

This was Allan's tale, in substance such as we have told it, with the addition of some details which he could not give, and the omission of others we cared not to introduce. The awe-struck Janet was still listening when it had been already some moments concluded. How much had been overheard by Alice was very doubtful, for she lay just as they had left her, and seemed dozing quietly. Janet, after peeping cautiously to make sure of this, shook her cousin by the arm, and, putting a pair of very unsteady lips to his ear, said,

"The fearfu' creature ye sent to his reckoning-the reckoning ye'll need to gie for him, wild man-slayer that ye are was her brither, Allan Johnstone!"

Allan started, and pushed back his stool involuntarily. "Are ye a witch, old wife?" he asked. "Did ye ken it yoursel', man? Tell me that." "Ay; but only whenever I saw the girl, and just put together this, that, and the other, that I had picked up from his lordship by accident"