"You must know,then,"proceeded Lord Menteith,"that Allan continued to increase in strength and activity,till his fifteenth year,about which time he assumed a total independence of character,and impatience of control,which much alarmed his surviving parent.He was absent in the woods for whole days and nights,under pretence of hunting,though he did not always bring home game.His father was the more alarmed,because several of the Children of the Mist,encouraged by the increasing troubles of the state,had ventured back to their old haunts,nor did he think it altogether safe to renew any attack upon them.The risk of Allan,in his wanderings,sustaining injury from these vindictive freebooters,was a perpetual source of apprehension.
"I was myself upon a visit to the castle when this matter was brought to a crisis.Allan had been absent since day-break in the woods,where I had sought for him in vain;it was a dark stormy night,and he did not return.His father expressed the utmost anxiety,and spoke of detaching a party at the dawn of morning in quest of him;when,as we were sitting at the supper-table,the door suddenly opened,and Allan entered the room with a proud,firm,and confident air.His intractability of temper,as well as the unsettled state of his mind,had such an influence over his father,that he suppressed all other tokens of displeasure,excepting the observation that I had killed a fat buck,and had returned before sunset,while he supposed Allan,who had been on the hill till midnight,had returned with empty hands.'Are you sure of that?'said Allan,fiercely;'here is something will tell you another tale.'
"We now observed his hands were bloody,and that there were spots of blood on his face,and waited the issue with impatience;when suddenly,undoing the comer of his plaid,he rolled down on the table a human head,bloody and new severed,saying at the same time,'Lie thou where the head of a better man lay before ye.'
From the haggard features,and matted red hair and beard,partly grizzled with age,his father and others present recognised the head of Hector of the Mist,a well-known leader among the outlaws,redoubted for strength and ferocity,who had been active in the murder of the unfortunate Forester,uncle to Allan,and had escaped by a desperate defence and extraordinary agility,when so many of his companions were destroyed.We were all,it may be believed,struck with surprise,but Allan refused to gratify our curiosity;and we only conjectured that he must have overcome the outlaw after a desperate struggle,because we discovered that he had sustained several wounds from the contest.
All measures were now taken to ensure him against the vengeance of the freebooters;but neither his wounds,nor the positive command of his father,nor even the locking of the gates of the castle and the doors of his apartment,were precautions adequate to prevent Allan from seeking out the very persons to whom he was peculiarly obnoxious.He made his escape by night from the window of the apartment,and laughing at his father's vain care,produced on one occasion the head of one,and upon another those of two,of the Children of the Mist.At length these men,fierce as they were,became appalled by the inveterate animosity and audacity with which Allan sought out their recesses.As he never hesitated to encounter any odds,they concluded that he must bear a charmed life,or fight under the guardianship of some supernatural influence.Neither gun,dirk,nor dourlach [DOURLACH--quiver;literally,satchel--of arrows.],they said,availed aught against him.They imputed this to the remarkable circumstances under which he was born;and at length five or six of the stoutest caterans of the Highlands would have fled at Allan's halloo,or the blast of his horn.
"In the meanwhile,however,the Children of the Mist carried on their old trade,and did the M'Aulays,as well as their kinsmen and allies,as much mischief as they could.This provoked another expedition against the tribe,in which I had my share;we surprised them effectually,by besetting at once the upper and under passes of the country,and made such clean work as is usual on these occasions,burning and slaying right before us.In this terrible species of war,even the females and the helpless do not always escape.One little maiden alone,who smiled upon Allan's drawn dirk,escaped his vengeance upon my earnest entreaty.She was brought to the castle,and here bred up under the name of Annot Lyle,the most beautiful little fairy certainly that ever danced upon a heath by moonlight.It was long ere Allan could endure the presence of the child,until it occurred to his imagination,from her features perhaps,that she did not belong to the hated blood of his enemies,but had become their captive in some of their incursions;a circumstance not in itself impossible,but in which he believes as firmly as in holy writ.
He is particularly delighted by her skill in music,which is so exquisite,that she far exceeds the best performers in this country in playing on the clairshach,or harp.It was discovered that this produced upon the disturbed spirits of Allan,in his gloomiest moods,beneficial effects,similar to those experienced by the Jewish monarch of old;and so engaging is the temper of Annot Lyle,so fascinating the innocence and gaiety of her disposition,that she is considered and treated in the castle rather as the sister of the proprietor,than as a dependent upon his charity.Indeed,it is impossible for any one to see her without being deeply interested by the ingenuity,liveliness,and sweetness of her disposition."
"Take care,my lord,"said Anderson,smiling;"there is danger in such violent commendations.Allan M'Aulay,as your lordship describes him,would prove no very safe rival."
