"Ye manna speak to her e'en now," whispered the old attendant.

The tall Highlander, sinking down upon the empty settle next the fire,
fixed his eyes upon the red embers and the huge heap of turf, and seemed
buried in profound abstraction. His dark eyes, and wild and enthusiastic
features, bore the air of one who, deeply impressed with his own
subjects of meditation, pays little attention to exterior objects.
An air of gloomy severity, the fruit perhaps of ascetic and solitary
habits, might, in a Lowlander, have been ascribed to religious
fanaticism; but by that disease of the mind, then so common both in
England and the Lowlands of Scotland, the Highlanders of this
period were rarely infected. They had, however, their own peculiar
superstitions, which overclouded the mind with thick-coming fancies, as
completely as the puritanism of their neighbours.

"His lordship's honour," said the Highland servant sideling up to Lord
Menteith, and speaking in a very low tone, "his lordship manna speak to
Allan even now, for the cloud is upon his mind."

Lord Menteith nodded, and took no farther notice of the reserved
mountaineer.

"Said I not," asked the latter, suddenly raising his stately person
upright, and looking at the domestic--"said I not that four were to
come, and here stand but three on the hall floor?"

"In troth did ye say sae, Allan," said the old Highlander, "and here's
the fourth man coming clinking in at the yett e'en now from the stable,
for he's shelled like a partan, wi' airn on back and breast, haunch and