A long time ago, when the powerful clan of the Cumyns were lords of half the country round, the chief of that clan slew a neighboring chieftain, with whom he had a feud; for feuds in those days were as easily found as blackberries, and quarrels might be had any day in the year for the _picking_. He that was slain had, at the time of his death, an only child, an infant, of the name of Hugh. The widow treasured deep within her heart the hope of vengeance, which the daily sight of her son, recalling, by his features, the memory of her slaughtered husband, kept ever awake. With the first opening of his intellect, he was instructed in the deed that made him fatherless, and taught to look forward to avenging his parent as a holy obligation cast upon him; and so, with his strength and his stature, grew his hatred of the Cumyns, and his resolution to take the life of him who had slain his father. He spent his days in the woods practicing archery, till at length he became a most expert bowman. None could send a shaft with so strong an arm, or so true an aim, as Hugh Shenigan; and the eagle or the red deer was sure to fall beneath his arrow, when the one was soaring too high in the air, or the other fleeing too swiftly on the hill, for ordinary woodcraft. But it was not the eagle or the deer that kept Hugh in the forest, and upon the mountains, from the dawn of the morning till the setting of the sun. He was watching for other prey, and at length chance brought what he sought within his reach. One day he climbed up the side of Benigloe, and took his station upon a spot that commanded a view of the glen between it and the opposite range of hills. He had ascertained that Cumyn would return to Blair by the glen that evening; and so it happened, that an hour or so before sun-fall he espied the chieftain, with two of his clan, wending onwards toward the base of the hill. A few minutes more, and they would reach a point within the range of his bow. His practiced eye measured the distance, and his heart throbbed with a fierce, dark emotion, as he put the shaft to the thong, and drew it, with a strong arm, to his ear. With a whiz, the arrow sped from the bow, and cleft the air with the speed of light, while a wild shout burst from the lips of the young archer. His anxiety, it would seem, did not suffer him to wait till his foe had come within range of his arrow, for it sank quivering into the earth at the foot of him for whose heart it was aimed. The shout and the shaft alike warned the Cumyns that danger was nigh, and not knowing by what numbers they might be assailed, they plunged into the heather on the hill side, and were quickly lost to the sight. But the young man watched with the keenness of an eagle, and his sense seemed intensified with the terrible desire of vengeance that consumed him. At length, just where the little stream falls from the crown of the hill, the form of a man became visible, standing out from the sky, now