"We shall be detained here a few minutes longer," said he; "I have ordered my men to make a litter of crossed branches, to bear you on their shoulders.
Your delicate limbs would not be equal to the toil of descending these heights, to the glen of stones.

The venerable man who inhabits there will protect you until he can summon your family, or friends, to receive his charge." At these words, which Helen thought were meant to reprove her for not having revealed herself, she blushed; but fearful of breathing a name under the interdict of the English governors, and which had already spread devastation over all with whom it had been connected; fearful of involving her preserver's safety, by making him aware of the persecuted creature he had rescued; she paused for a moment, and then, with the color heightening on her cheeks, replied: "For your humanity, brave sir, shown this night to a friendless woman, I must be ever grateful; but not even to the hermit may I reveal my name.

It is fraught with danger to every honest Scot who should know that he protects one who bears it; and therefore, least of all, noble stranger, would I breathe it to you." She averted her face, to conceal the emotions she could not subdue.
The knight looked at her intensely, and profoundly sighed.

Half her unbraided locks lay upon her bosom, which now heaved with suppressed feelings; and the fast-falling tears, gliding through her long eyelashes dropped upon his hand; he sighed again, and tore his eyes from her countenance.

"I ask not, madam, to know what you think proper to conceal; but danger has no alarms for me, when, by incurring it, I serve those who need a protector." A sudden thought flashed across her mind; might it not be possible that this tender guardian of her safety, this heroic profferer of service, was the noble Wallace?
But the vain idea fled.