national. His trews and plaid were the tartan of his clan, and his bonnet was distinguished by a single plume of

an erne.

His attendants were dressed in the philabeg and plaid. The chief took St. Cldye by the arm, and the whole party went to Dunmorven castle.

Dunmorven himself enquired particularly how his son had fallen in battle; and when they came to the castle, Lady Dunmorven and her daughters, to whom St. Clyde was introduced by the chief, welcomed their visitor as be, came their dignity and his rank.

But no sooner had this ceremony ceased, than the dutiful and parental soul of the mother and her daughters turned on the fate of the lamented Vich Ean Dunmorven.

It was clear to St. Clyde that this mother had not yet ceased to brood over the fate of her son, and the death

of their brother had given the young ladies a large share of the wild abstracted mourner; indulging in an intensity of feelings; stung with disappointed hopes; maddening with indignation at the fury of murderous battle; and drooping with hopeless recollections of the days of childhood and youth which the lamented Vich Ean Dunmorven had passed under his sire's paternal roof. Their grief fed its fancy on the banquet of Nature, and it hugged its wretchedness with that sort of perverse satisfaction which wretchedness of this description, and of this only, seems capable of producing.

It was not possible for St. Clyde's heart not to sympathize with them, and to turn the edge of its feelings to participate in this chaos of misery, And though he strove much to assuage their grief and anguish, by

every possible turn of thought and expression, the tempest of wretched suffering did not subside till their natures had exhausted their sufferings. The calm which followed, was that black melancholy which sits and throws around her a death-like silence, and a dread repose.

The gloom which the presence of this welcome visitant threw around the castle, saddened the heart even of the chief, for St. Clyde handed him the sword of his fathers, which he had carefully saved in all his dangers; he had received it from Vich Ean Dunmorven in the hour of his death, and the moment of victory; it was an old heirloom, whose appearance, whilst it filled the chief's heart with sorrow, caused his eye to sparkle with martial pride; and a ring which Vich Ean Dunmorven with his last words desired St. Clyde to "give! give it yourself!

to my mother!" deepened the horror of her affliction; and though it was some years since she had received the sad tidings of his death, the ring seemed to set before her eyes the last agonies and struggles of her only son, and opened afresh the wounds his fall had inflicted on her maternal heart. Every one partook of the banquet which the sight of this sword and ring served up; and there was no one present who did not become a ravenous guest, whose soul was not largely sated with its miserable dainties.

The family of Dunmorven now turned their conversation on the fate of the Laird St. Clyde, and his wife, and Norah; and Colin was reduced to as much sorrow as the other, and the day was closed in the same manner by the female part of the family; but at dinner the chief resumed the dignity of his sires of old. He related their deeds of

glory; their military ardour; their dignity of independence; their contempt of danger; the reverence of their formidable retinue of armed vassals; the signal of the crosh-tarie, by which himself bought to the carn-a-whin at Tobermo

ry the Macdonals with their Freich, the Grants with their Craig-clachie, and the Mackenzies with their Tullickard; but he was glad the system of antiquated manners had now given way to equitable laws, and that the fiery-cross now ceased to bring, in three hours for thirty miles around, to any rendezvous, the disaffected with their war cries of Friech, Craig-clachie, or Tullickard ; but though Dunmorven seemed to rejoice that the black-mail could not now be levied by powerful clans on those that were weaker, he could not help observing how the fidelity of his father-in-law was observed towards his own clan, whose cattle he always se