Annot Lyle endeavoured in vain to restrain the gathering tears, when she said, “ONE ring, Allan, I will accept from you as a memorial of your goodness to a poor orphan, but do not press me to take more; for I cannot, and will not, accept a gift of such disproportioned value.” “Make your choice, then,” said Allan; “your delicacy may be well founded; the others will assume a shape in which they may be more useful to you.” “Think not of it,” said Annot, choosing from the contents of the casket a ring, apparently the most trifling in value which it contained; “keep them for your own, or your brother’s bride.--But, good heavens!” she said, interrupting herself, and looking at the ring, “what is this that I have chosen?” Allan hastened to look upon it, with eyes of gloomy apprehension; it bore, in enamel, a death’s head above two crossed daggers. When Allan recognised the device, he uttered a sigh so deep, that she dropped the ring from her hand, which rolled upon the floor. Lord Menteith picked it up, and returned it to the terrified Annot. “I take God to witness,” said Allan, in a solemn tone, “that your hand, young lord, and not mine, has again delivered to her this ill-omened gift. It was the mourning ring worn by my mother in memorial of her murdered brother.” “I fear no omens,” said Annot, smiling through her tears; “and nothing coming through the hands of my two patrons,” so she was wont to call Lord Menteith and Allan, “can bring bad luck to the poor orphan.” She put the ring on her finger, and, turning to her harp, sung, to a lively air, the following verses of one of the fashionable songs of the period, which had found its way, marked as it was with the quaint hyperbolical taste of King Charles’s time, from some court masque to the wilds of Perthshire:-- “Gaze not upon the stars, fond sage, In them no influence lies; To read the fate of youth or age, Look on my Helen’s eyes. “Yet, rash astrologer, refrain! Too dearly would be won The prescience of another’s pain, If purchased by thine own.” “She is right, Allan,” said Lord Menteith; “and this end of an old song is worth all we shall gain by our attempt to look into futurity.” “She is WRONG, my lord,” said Allan, sternly, “though you, who treat with lightness the warnings I have given you, may not live to see the event of the omen.--laugh not so scornfully,” he added, interrupting himself “or rather laugh on as loud and as long as you will; your term of laughter will find a pause ere long.” “I care not for your visions, Allan,” said Lord Menteith; “however short my span of life, the eye of no Highland seer can see its termination.” “For heaven’s sake,” said Annot Lyle, interrupting him, “you know his nature, and how little he can endure--”