It was a cheery company as you may guess, and at last I was at a display of our Highland dancing. I see dancing to-day in many places that is not the thing as I was taught it by the strongest dancer in all Albainn. The company sat facing me as I stepped it over a couple of sword-blades, and their backs were to the door. Mackenzie was humming a _port-a-bheul_ with a North Country twang even in his nose, and I was at my last step when the door opened with no noise and a girl looked in, her eyes staring hard at me alone, and a finger on her lips for silence. A man of less discernment would have stopped his dance incontinent and betrayed the presence of the lady to the others, who never dreamt so interesting a sight was behind them. But I never let on. I even put an extra flourish on my conclusion, that came just as the girl backed out at the door beckoning me to follow her. Two minutes later, while my friends were bellowing a rough Gaelic chorus, I was out following my lady of silence up a little stair and into a room below the eaves. There she narrated to me the plot that we unhappy lads were to be the victims of. The house was a trap: it was to be surrounded at night, when we had eaten and drunken over-well, and the sword was our doom arranged for. The girl told me all this very quietly in the French she learned I was best master of next to my own Gaelic, and--what a mad thing’s the blood in a youth--all the time I was indifferent to her alarum, and pondering upon her charms of lip and eye. She died a twelvemonth later in Glogoe of Silesia, and---- God give her peace!” “You may save your supplication,” said Gordon; “her portion’s assigned, a thing fixed and unalterable, and your prayer is a Popish conceit.” “God give her peace! I’ll say it, Master Gordon, and I’ll wish it in the face of every Covenanter ever droned a psalm! She died in Silesia, not careless, I’m thinking, of the memory of one or two weeks we spent in Frankfort, whose outer lanes and faubourgs are in my recollection blossoming with the almond-flower and scented at eve.” He rose to his feet and paced the floor beside us, strong, but loosened a little at the tongue by the generous wine of Dalness; his mien a blending of defiance against the cheatry of circumstance and a display of old ancient grief. “Heart of the rose, _gramachree_, bird-song at the lip, star eye and wisdom, yet woman to the core! I wish I were so young as then I was, and _ochanie_, what availed my teens, if the one woman that ever understood me were no more but a dust in Glogoe!” “Come, come, man,” I cried; “it’s a world full of very choice women.”