had inflicted, for the Scot fell to the ground, covering his face and groaning in the anguish of despair.

Clara Warden sat for a moment confounded and terrified by the violence of his grief, for his whole frame shook where he lay, and convulsive sobs, in spite of all his efforts, forced themselves from his lips. She clasped her hands, and looked up beseechingly to Heaven; and although the eye could catch nothing between the earth and sky, save the driving curtain of clouds, and the agitated tops of trees, she found the aid she sought, and rose with tender and affectionate care to make her return of charitable offices to him, who so short a time before had stood over and comforted her in her misery. She knelt down by the prostrate man; she gently disengaged one hand from its grasp of the earth, then wiped away the clay and torn grass that hung about the fingers, and took it between hers. And now warm tears fell on the mourner's hands, and he heard soft accents mingled with sighs and tremulous entreaties by his side. He knew that his companion was there sympathizing with his sorrow, distressed and penitent for having caused, and meekly endeavouring to soothe it; but it was long ere he could bring himself to bare his face, wet, although with not unmanly tears, and red with the burning shame of dishonour to the eyes even of such a comforter. At length his convulsed hand opened, and pressed the gentle palm on which it rested; the next moment he arose, and was rushing headlong towards the wood, but Clara clung to his hand, imploring him not to desert her.

"Oh, if thou leavest me," she cried, "who is to protect me here, weak and wretched as I am-in a lonely forest at the dead of night -far from home? Stay with me, oh my friend! Stay, and I will weep with thee-I will sit near thee-I will watch over thee-Oh, do but stay beside me, and be comforted!" He turned a face of inexpressible anguish upon the terrified girl. "I would but have hidden my head," he said, in broken accents, and yielded-human nature could no longer withstand the appeal of the piteous eyes that met his. He sat down

again, burying his face in his hands, and giving free expression to the greatness and bitterness of his sorrow. "Dear friend," at length he said, composing his agitated features, and taking the hand of the fair being who knelt, absorbed in wonder, selfreproach, and pity, by his side, "I have yielded to that in thy presence which never abased my manhood before; but such sorrow as mine to-night, it has never before been my lot to encounter. Thou dost feel for me and pity me, and thy tears are balm to my grief; but weep not, I pray thee, that thou hast been chosen a messenger of this ill to me. The news which from thy lips has been borne, even poorly as it is, would have been, I fear me much, little less than unsupportable from any other's. I have lost kinsman and kinswoman; ignominiously lost her whom I once loved best in the world-but even when thus desolate, I have found a comforter, a consoler,-perhaps a truer friend."

Clara was painfully conscious that her situation would not permit her to listen to the avowal which she felt approaching. In another place, under other circumstancesbeneath the roof of friends, and near the natural guardians of her youth, she might have awaited in fluttering expectance the declaration of such a lover; but there, alone and in the depths of the forest, she shrunk with startled timidity from the dangerous topic; and, after a confused pause, cast round her eyes, and asked

"Noble sir, what dost thou judge best to be done?"

The Scot roused himself from the influences of his mingled emotions, and, standing up at her question, with a heavy sigh replied

"We must trim our fire, lady, and rest by it till daybreak. I will frame thee a tent of these mantles, which shall be respected with as much loyalty as if it were the lodging of my own queen. I shall bring hither our oars and sail from the boat, and employ them also in building the rude booth thou must inhabit tonight; to-morrow will, I trust, see thee in a fitter dwelling. Rest here, then, till I return; I shall not be long away."

He gave her an assuring but melancholy smile, and departed to exe

cute his purpose. Clara gazed after him till the thick underwood closed between them, and then sunk her head and wept, she knew not whether for her own helplessness or for his sorrow. At this moment, a party of Irish were descending a rude defile in the woods, within arrow range of the lovely and disconsolate English girl. They were the escort of a lady who rode in the midst muffled and silent. The reflection of the great fire had caught their attention from a distance, and, as they advanced upon the light, a nimble scout had been already despatched to reconnoitre. He met them in breathless haste, ere they had yet turned into full sight of the scene beside the ruined house, and signed to them to draw up.

"Who are they?" questioned the lady in Gaelic Irish.

"A man and an Englishwoman, Banierna," he replied; "and by your head," he added, in a low voice," I know the purple cloak of the Duine-Waisil."

The lady started on her seat, and bent her ear to the whisper in which her spy communicated the remainder of his intelligence.

"Put out your lights," she said, in a suppressed voice, to her attendants; and do thou, Alister Mackenzie, come and see if this be true."

A man wrapped in a dark mantle dismounted, and came forward.

"For the love of the Virgin, Alister," said the lady in an impatient and tremulous voice, "go forward with Munagh Garbh, and tell me truly whether thou thinkest him in the right;-I cannot trust myself to look at them."

She was weeping passionately ere she had said so much, and remained in tears till Mackenzie returned.

"It is too true, Banierna," he said; "I stole down within a step or two of where she sat,-they had been at supper, he was gone; but I knew Harry Óge's cloak-and she sat upon it."

"Alister, Alister, I shall go mad!" cried the lady: "What! supping and carousing in the open woods with the daughter of the stranger, and I seeking him from Bann to Blackwater. I will go down and upbraid him to his face!"

"Banierna, he is gone," said Mackenzie;" and we cannot guess whither."

"Then," exclaimed she, gathering up her bridle, " I will go down and put out his paramour's eyes-with my own hands I will do it!" she cried, struggling to urge on her horse, but Mackenzie withheld her.

"Banierna," said he; "he may be still within sight and hearing for aught we know: It were not safe to let him see thy displeasure; but listen, and I will tell thee what may well be done. I and Munach Garbh will steal down, wrap a cloak about the young Saxon's head to keep her from crying out, and bring her away. If he should see us-well, what of that?-We knew not it was in his protection she had been.-We found an enemy's daughter in the wood, and took her for an attendant on the Banierna More."

"And if you can carry her off unseen?" questioned the lady in an eager whisper.

Make sure he has no suspicion of us," replied Mackenzie:" and then-what the Banierna pleases to command."

"Alister," said she, "if thou canst bring her off, I will give thee as much land as there is betwixt this and Dungannon."

"We can do it, I am satisfied," said he: "She sits with her back to the wall, close by the open of a window. We will lift her through without shaking a curl of her coolun."

"The Saxon wears no coolun, Alister," said she bitterly; " yet he forsakes me for a short-haired stranger."

Mackenzie said no more; but, signing to the other, descended stealthily to the back of the ruined building. They executed their purpose without noise or struggling. Clara's face was covered, and her arms pinioned, before she could utter a single cry; and, in another minute, she felt herself placed on horseback before a man, and surrounded by whispers and exclamations in an unknown language.

"Well done, good Alister," cried the lady as he returned. "Munagh Garbh, thou shalt be promoted to the axe for this; thou art henceforth my own galloglass;-but what hast thou here ?"

The kern stretched out to her the drinking-cup which he had picked up as they left the scene of the luckless supper.

"Banierna," said the man," it is O'NEILL'S own meadher: I found it by the young Saxon's side."

She snatched it from him, and flung it with all her strength down the steep bank below.

"Cursed be the wine, and the winecup of their banquet; and a double curse upon the fruit of their infamy! -Strangle her,-strangle her, and cast her after !"

"Banierna," said Mackenzie, in an expostulating tone-but he had no occasion to urge farther argument of mercy, for while he spoke a long and loud shout sounded from the woods, and the lady, with a suppressed cry of alarm, gave her horse the reins, and was followed by the rest of the party in equal consternation, and at as rapid a pace as the darkness and rude nature of the road permitted. The Scot was calling the name of Clara Warden through all the wood, in an agony of high distress. He had returned, and missed his companion. There were the mantles on which she had sat, and the napkins spread beside and undisturbed, but she was gone, and there was no answer to his repeated cries. He seized a brand from the fire, and rushed into the wood, for he thought he heard the tramp of horses. He held his torch above his head, and cleared the thick beechgrove; a rough horse track was before him, and a company of mounted figures, who or what he could not guess in the uncertain light, bursting down it in evident confusion and alarm. He sprang out, but they were past and gone, all save one. He was intercepted, and must either fight or take the hill side, for the Scot had pushed him from the road among the furze and bramble at one side. The hill below was almost a precipice; no horse could descend it; the Scot sprang upon him with a shout, but the horseman slid from his seat, and plunged into the thicket. The Scot heard him crashing down the steep slope, and rushing across the little stream below; but he did not attempt to follow; he blessed the chance that had given

him a horse at his greatest need, and wondering much at the apparent cowardice with which an armed man had fled before his single and naked hand, he mounted the abandoned steed, and although hopeless of overtaking those whom he pursued, urged him down their track as long as he could distinguish it before him. But when at length the night to his strained eyes seemed to fall darker, and the way to grow more intricate and shadowy, he rode a little way into the wood at one side, and there tied his horse to a tree, and laid himself down to sleep. Fatigue and danger uninterrupted during two days and a night, save for the short time he had spent in such transitory pleasure beside the ruin, gave him their return of forgetfulness and ease till daybreak. When the east was growing grey with the summer sunrise, the Scot awoke, fresh and ready for whatever might befall him. He sat a moment, pondering with himself whether he had not been dreaming all his past adventures, from the time when he first landed at Olderfleet Castle, up to the loss of his friend Clara; but the sight of the dim forest around him, and the grey charger standing by his side, soon roused him to the reality of his recollections, and the necessity of being up and doing. He sprang on his horse's back, and pursued the road he had taken on the past night. It was no more than a stripe of greensward, melting at times into the dry channel of a torrent, and sometimes lost, save for a narrow pathway, beaten among the trunks of overhanging trees; yet it still afforded the only means that his clearer faculties could put trust in, of overtaking or succouring the ill-fated girl.

As the day broke, he looked over a country wooded to the roots of the hills, which rose black and precipitous upon the north and west; here and there he could discern the walls of a deserted tower, or perhaps a patch of grazing or tilled land, beside the ruins of a miserable village; but human habitation or human being he saw none till long after mid-day. The afternoon fell hot and sultry, for the stormy clouds of yesterday had cleared off, and a strong sun made all the dank thickets and

sedgy hollows swelter, till a heavy haze arose that dimmed the sharp blue outline of the mountains, and seemed to hang upon the very leaves of the forest with a clogging languor, which soon imparted itself to both horse and man. The Scot perceiving his steed's failing power, select ed a spot of green herbage by the edge of a stream, and, secure of his not wandering beyond his pasture, removed the bridle with its heavy bit, took off the unstirruped padsaddle, and turned him loose to graze; then sat himself down by the little river's side, and gazed on the running water, musing on his strange adventures, till heat and fatigue again put him to sleep. When he awoke, the shadow of the mountain-ash, under which he had been sheltered when he lay down, played in the evening breeze upon the opposite bank of the stream. He rose hastily, but started to see a handsome youth attending his waking, cap in hand, upon the bank beside him.

"Duine Waisil," said the young stranger, in an humble voice," you will need a horse-boy to carry your lance and shield-may I attend your nobleness to the wars ?"

The youth spoke in the Gaelic dialect of the north, and when the Scot questioned him whence he came, he replied, "From Sorley Buye, with letters to the Reagh More-I have left them with his scribe MacEver, and my errand is finished. I am weary of the stables of Dunluce, and would fain follow some brave gentleman to the field." "Thy name?"

"I am Jeniko MacRickard MacCormack," said the boy; " and the reason why I ask for service in Tyrone is, because I am a Macquillen, and I hate the Scot."

"Why serve him then ?" "Thou art not a Scot?" said the boy, fixing an eye of fierce enquiry on his question.

Randall of Mull smiled, and said, "Thou dost mistake me; why, I would ask, dost thou serve Yellow Sorley in the stables of Dunluce, and why bear his letters over the hills of Tyrone ?"

"In Dunluce, which is mine own castle by right," replied the boy, "I served the yellow tyrant because I was his prisoner; in Tyrone, because

he made me swear by the tomb in the Cathedral of Coleraine, that I would do his errand ere he let me cross the drawbridge-none but a Macquillen dare venture up the Bann, and therefore I was chosen."

"Thou art a brave youth," said the Scot," and I would willingly take thee into my service, but that for certain weighty reasons I must just now ride alone; but tell me the way to Foichnagall, and I will reward thee."

"You will see the camp of the Reagh More, noble sir, from the top of yonder hill. O'Neill himself is absent, if it be he whom you seek."

"It is the Banierna O'Neill, to whom I have an urgent suit,” replied the Scot, for a faint hope of seeing his unhappy cousin here flashed upon his uncertain mind-" if thou wilt tell me in what part of the camp I may find her," he added, “ I will give thee thanks and reward."

"The Banierna More," said Jeniko MacRickard," has her pavilion on the right of the main street; thou wilt know it by the red hand floating from the flagstaff. I saw her early this morning, entering with her train from the woods, and it seemed to me that a maiden who was with them was in some sort their prisoner."

"Good Jeniko," cried the Scot; "tell me, I beseech thee, what was the dress of that maiden ?"

"She was wrapped in a mantle," replied he, " and I marked no part of her dress save her shoes; but, by virtue of my baptism, I never saw such shoes on maiden's feet before; they had red pieces of wood two fingers deep beneath the heels, fine golden clasps upon them, and"

"Lamh dearg marks the pavilion, thou sayest?"

"Noble sir, yes-may thy suit prosper; the daughter of MacAllan is all-powerful with the Reagh More."

"The daughter of MacAllan ?" repeated the Scot, "whom meanest thou?"

"She who had rather be an Irish Banierna than the Countess of Argyle," replied the boy.

"Jeniko," cried the Scot, "thou tellest me of the wanton wife of O'Donnell. I ask, where lies the tent of the lady of O'Neill-of the daughter of Sir James of Kintyre?"

"Ah!" said the boy, "truly I have

made a great mistake. By the head of Walter Kittagh, I pity that poor lady, Scot although she be; and Sorley, I can tell thee, foams at the mouth to hear of her wrongs-more sorrow on the yellow wolf dog is my constant prayer, but I would not ask it through means of the lady Catharine, who once bought off my own uncle, Tibbot MacCormack, when he was prisoner to the great Earl of Sussex."

"O'Neill treats her unkindly, Jeniko ?"

"By the beard that I expect on my face," said the boy, drawing back a step, "were it not that I have some thought, thou art thyself, O'Neill, I would say that Shane Diomas is a cruel man."

"Fear nothing, Jeniko," said the Scot, "but tell me why thou takest me for O'Neill ?"

"A bard, noble sir, described the Reagh More to me, as he last left the camp, mounted on a grey charger, clad in a purple cloak, all fringed with golden tassels, wearing even such a plume and cap as this; and being a tall gentleman of free and ruddy aspect-all as thou art, noble sir."

"Jeniko, I must see the daughter of Kintyre-direct me to her tent without delay-I am not O'Neill; but fear nothing."

"It is a poor lodging, sir, on the left of the camp, hard by the little river. I know not how thou wilt distinguish it, unless by the loneliness of the doors; for the poor lady nei. ther moves out herself nor suffers her maidens even to shew themselves while her cruel kinswoman, the Banierna More is in the camp. In truth, sir, she is here by force, for if she had her liberty she would not be long, methinks, from our own fair country of the Rout."

"Is there no other mark, Jeniko?" "Yes, yes, noble sir, I had forgotten-a galloglass keeps guard before the door; to-day it is Hugh Duff MacAulay; you will know him by the heft of his battle-axe, which I myself painted red and white for him, on consideration of his letting me ride Sir Neale MacPhiling's bay to water."

The Scot placed a coin in his hand of greater value than he had ever seen before. "Now, Jeniko," he said,

"I will take thee into my service, if thou wilt but promise to be silent and do my bidding."

The boy said firmly, "By the head of Walter Kittagh, I will be your true man."

"Then follow me at a distance to the camp-say nothing of our meeting, and await my farther orders at the gate, which is nearest to the road leading hence to Armagh-which is that ?"

"The Dungannon gate, noble sir." "Knowest thou the road to Armagh ?"

"I know it not, noble sir, farther than five miles from the camp; for the English are on that side, and although they be still beyond the Blackwater, we are not to hunt or fowl in that direction."

"Then farewell for a while, Jeniko, be silent and punctual."

The Scot had now no doubt that the chief of the Irish whom he had left on Ram's Island was O'Neill, and that Clara had been seized by his jealous concubine, himself being mistaken for John the Proud, by his unintentional disguise. He had formed the resolution of profiting by this casual resemblance, and taking his chance of passing for the great rebel, till he might obtain an interview with his cousin, and endeavour to release his fair friend. "If they believe me to be O'Neill," he argued with himself, "and know that I had sight of their party in the wood, they will not dare to offer any violence to Clara. The proud adultress will at least secure my poor friend from all chance of dishonour; so if my plan should fail, I alone will suffer; perhaps the English army may release her-perhaps the jealous woman may voluntarily send her home. Alas! I little thought three days ago that I should so soon be thus involved in the fate of one now dearer to me than I thought woman would ever be again!"

Occupied with such reflections, he rode along, scarcely observing that the road grew gradually wider and more beaten as he ascended the hill pointed out by Jeniko, as lying between him and the camp, but he started on coming to the brow of the eminence, for he had rarely seen a stronger, or more extensive encampment than that which occupied the