Had your marriage been a proclaimed and acknowledged action, our stratagem to throw an obstacle into your way that couldna be got ower, neither wad nor could hae been practised against ye." "Great Heaven!" said the unfortunate nobleman--"it is as if a film fell from my obscured eyes! Yes, I now well understand the doubtful hints of consolation thrown out by my wretched mother, tending indirectly to impeach the evidence of the horrors of which her arts had led me to believe myself guilty." "She could not speak mair plainly," answered Elspeth, "without confessing her ain fraud,--and she would have submitted to be torn by wild horses, rather than unfold what she had done; and if she had still lived, so would I for her sake.

They were stout hearts the race of Glenallan, male and female, and sae were a' that in auld times cried their gathering-word of Clochnaben--they stood shouther to shouther--nae man parted frae his chief for love of gold or of gain, or of right or of wrang.

The times are changed, I hear, now." The unfortunate nobleman was too much wrapped up in his own confused and distracted reflections, to notice the rude expressions of savage fidelity, in which, even in the latest ebb of life, the unhappy author of his misfortunes seemed to find a stern and stubborn source of consolation.
"Great Heaven!" he exclaimed, "I am then free from a guilt the most horrible with which man can be stained, and the sense of which, however involuntary, has wrecked my peace, destroyed my health, and bowed me down to an untimely grave.

Accept," he fervently uttered, lifting his eyes upwards, "accept my humble thanks! If I live miserable, at least I shall not die stained with that unnatural guilt!--And thou--proceed if thou hast more to tell--proceed, while thou hast voice to speak it, and I have powers to listen." "Yes," answered the beldam, "the hour when you shall hear, and I shall speak, is indeed passing rapidly away.

Death has crossed your brow with his finger, and I find his grasp turning every day coulder at my heart.
Interrupt me nae mair with exclamations and groans and accusations, but hear my tale to an end! And then--if ye be indeed sic a Lord of Glenallan as I hae heard of in my day--make your merrymen gather the thorn, and the brier, and the green hollin, till they heap them as high as the house-riggin', and burn! burn! burn! the auld witch Elspeth, and a' that can put ye in mind that sic a creature ever crawled upon the land!" "Go on," said the Earl, "go on--I will not again interrupt you." He spoke in a half-suffocated yet determined voice, resolved that no irritability on his part should deprive him of this opportunity of acquiring proofs of the wonderful tale he then heard.