The mouth and chin were both small and delicately formed; the slight appearance of beard and moustache seeming to denote his age as some one-and-twenty years.

His eyes, glancing through the opening in the mask, were large and very dark, often flashing brightly, when his outward bearing was so calm and quiet as to afford little evidence of emotion.

Some there were, indeed, who believed the eye the truer index of the man than aught else about him, and to fancy there was far more in that sad and lonely knight than was revealed.
It was evident, however, that to the men now with him his remaining so closely masked was no subject of surprise, that they regarded it as an ordinary thing, which in consequence had lost its strangeness.

They were eager and respectful in their manner towards him, offering to raise him a seat of turf at some little distance from their noisy comrades; but acknowledging their attention with kindness and courtesy, he refused it, and rousing himself with some difficulty from his desponding thoughts, threw himself on the sward beside his men, and joined in their mirth and jest.
"Hast thou naught to tell to while away this tedious hour, good Murdoch ?" he asked, after a while, addressing a gray-headed veteran.
"Aye, aye, a tale, a tale; thou hast seen more of the Bruce than all of us together," repeated many eager voices, "and knowest yet more of his deeds than we do; a tale an thou wilt, but of no other hero than the Bruce." "The Bruce!" echoed the veteran; "see ye not his deeds yourselves, need ye more of them ?" but there was a sly twinkle in his eye that betrayed his love to speak was as great as his comrades to hear him.

"Have ye not heard, aye, and many of you seen his adventures and escapes in Carrick, hunted even as he was by bloodhounds; his guarding that mountain pass, one man against sixty, aye, absolutely alone against the Galwegian host of men and bloodhounds; Glen Fruin, Loudun Hill, Aberdeen; the harrying of Buchan; charging the treacherous foe, when they had to bear him from his litter to his horse, aye, and support him there; springing up from his couch of pain, and suffering, and depression, agonizing to witness, to hurl vengeance on the fell traitors; aye, and he did it, and brought back health to his own heart and frame; and Forfar, Lorn, Dunstaffnage--know ye not all these things?
Nay, have ye not seen, shared in them all--what would ye more ?" "The harrying of Buchan, tell us of that," loudly exclaimed many voices; while some others shouted, "the landing of the Bruce--tell us of his landing, and the spirit fire at Turnberry Head; the strange woman that addressed him." "Now which am I to tell, good my masters ?" laughingly answered the old man, when the tumult in a degree subsided.