wail of desolation had arisen among the cottages.
Sir Archie Munro, in anguish for his people,
strove in vain to shield them from the horrors
of the times. Day by day one disappeared and
another disappeared from among the hearty
glensmen. Frantic tales of distress came flying
to the castle. The servants clenched their
hands and cursed over their work. Miss Madge
sat up in her solitude and wept herself nearly
blind. Lady Helen went into hysterics at every
fresh piece of news. Miss Golden blanched
and was silent for awhile, but refused to believe
one half the stories. And Hester sat up in her
tower with her needle trembling in her fingers;
for the stitching and ornamenting, the embroidering
and flouncing, had all to go on the same,
just as if a rain of blood had not begun to fall
over the land.

Miss Golden began to think that it had been
better she had taken Sir Archie's advice and
returned to England; but she was, as she had
said, not a coward, and she made up her mind,
bravely enough, to see the worst to its end.
Lady Helen lamented sorely that she should
have been the means of bringing her darling
Janet to so miserable a country. Yet, in the
same breath, her ladyship quarrelled with her
son, because he proposed for the women of the
household a prudent retreat to England or
France till such time as these miseries should
be over. No, why should they go flying over
the world, to hide themselves, as if they were a
set of rebels? She believed that Archie made
the most of things. They could not get so bad
as he seemed to expect. She would not set off
on a journey in such times, to be dragged out
of her coach and shot. She would just lie by on
the cosiest couch in her drawing-room, with the
most interesting novel she could lay hands
upon; and let no one come telling her frightful
stories till this panic should have subsided, and
the world have come to its senses!

One day a terrible cry arose throughout the
glens, rolled along the valley, rang through
the mountains. The name of a man, a rebel,
hunted by the soldiers, was shouted from rock
to rock, till the very echoes bandied it about
with shuddering shrieks—was muttered in
prayers by tongues that quivered and clove to
the mouth with terror. This man was the joy
and pride of his friends, foremost among the
favourites of the lowly glenspeople. They
hunted him in the morning, and they hunted
him in the evening, and days went past, and
even his own kinsfolk had no clue to his
hiding-place. And a month went past. A stray
goat had given him milk, and the heath had
given him its berries; but these resources having
failed, he was at last driven by starvation from
his lair. Pallid, shivering, his clothing
saturated with the damps of the dripping cavern in
which he had lain, tottering upon his feet with
the weakness of hunger, fearing to meet the
form of a man lest an enemy should make him
his prey, or to draw near a dwelling lest
destruction should come with him over the
threshold of a fellow-creature; sick and
desolate, he found himself driven by the very
scourge of approaching death to creep down a
little lower on the mountain side, were it even
to warm his shivering limbs by the sides of the
wandering kine, or to crave a handful of meal
out of a roving beggar's wallet.

No such comfort for the hunted rebel. The
soldiers espied his meagre stooping form, creeping
along under the shelter of the whin-bushes
and heathery knolls. It would have been difficult
for eyes less practised in man-hunting to
recognise the stalwart youth who had flown to
the hills from the bayonet, in the bent
shuddering creature who sought shelter from the
bonnie braes that had carried his feet with pride.
But these soldiers were right skilful at their
work.

The game was scented; the cry was up. Oh,
that a jovial ruddy sun should ever look down
and smile upon such a piteous scene! A brave
son of the mountains, hunted like a fox to the
death among those mountains, the pure love of
mother-land being his crime. But then Lady
Helen said he was very much to blame. He
had been right well off in his cottage in the
glens. Why need he take to troubling himself
about the misery of his country? And certainly
it was most inconsiderate of him to throw her
ladyship into hysterics on her sofa.

The chase lasted long, for the rebel knew the
secrets of his hills. But bloodhounds will not
be balked when they have once scented blood,
neither would our brave soldiers miss their
prey. Yet, notwithstanding, when it was late
in the afternoon this rebel, having been started
some seven times since morning, gave them the
slip, and was lost sight of in the neighbourhood
of the castle.

The cook had just sent up an afternoon cup
of tea to the several bedrooms of the ladies.
The red setting sun was warming up the
comfortable haunts of the kitchen, pantries,
housekeeper's room, and the various closets and
passages of the servants' quarters. Several of the
servants were gathered together in a passage
discussing in whispers the latest news of the
rebel hunt. Pretty Polly, Lady Helen's maid,
was pale and red-eyed, struggling to put in her
word between recurring agonies of tears. But
then the rebel in question was her lover. When
last she had seen him he had been handsome
and stout, bringing her a bunch of gay ribbons
from the fair. Now he was a shadow, a spectre
of starvation, with a price upon his head, and
bayonets lying in wait for him at every point
from which the blessed wind could blow. Good
God! who was this, here amongst them?

Pat the butler had opened a back door of
the premises, leading into a thick grove, into
which evening shadows were already creeping.
A flying phantom, somewhat like a galvanised
skeleton, had leaped past him through the
doorway, clasped its hands in his face, and sped
on further into the castle.

Poor Polly sank in a little pale heap in her
corner, and was a trouble to no one till such
time as people had leisure to look to her,