that, with well nigh heartbroken tears, she denounced his iniquitous
act, for his comrades and himself only laughed and scoffed, and even
threatened to burn her cottage to the ground. But as the crimson and
setting rays of a summer sun fell on the lifeless bodies of her two
sons, her eyes met those of him who had so basely and cruelly wronged
her, and, after once more stigmatizing his barbarity, with deep
measured voice she pronounced these ominous words, embodying a curse
which M'Alister Indre little anticipated would so surely come to pass.
"I suffer now," said the grief-stricken woman, "but you shall suffer
always--you have made me childless, but you and yours shall be
heirless for ever--never shall there be a son to the house of
M'Alister."

These words were treated with contempt by M'Alister Indre, who mocked
and laughed at the malicious prattle of a woman's tongue. But time
proved only too truly how persistently the curse of the bereaved woman
clung to the race of her oppressors, and, as Sir Bernard Burke
remarks, it was in the reign of Queen Anne that the hopes of the house
of M'Alister "flourished for the last time, they were blighted for
ever." The closing scene of this prophetic curse was equally tragic
and romantic; for, whilst espousing the cause of the Pretender, the
young and promising heir of the M'Alisters was taken prisoner, and
with many others put to death. Incensed at the wrongs of his exiled
monarch, and full of fiery impulse, he had secretly left his youthful
wife, and joined the army at Perth that was to restore the Pretender
to his throne. For several months the deserted wife fretted under the
terrible suspense, often silently wondering if, after all, her
husband--the last hope of the House of M'Alister--was to fall under
the ban of the widow's curse. She could not dispel from her mind the
hitherto disastrous results of those ill-fated words, and would only