"Aye, aye, it was at Culloden," replied John. "But, if ye be Christians, give me a drink of warm milk and water, to put away this shivering thirst that is on me, and let me lie down in a warm bed for half an hour." "Och aye, poor man, ye shall not want a drop of warm milk and water, and such a bed as we can give you," said the old woman, moving about to prepare the drink for him. "Thank ye--thank ye!" said John, much refreshed and comforted by swallowing the thin but hot potation. And then following the old man into the inner apartment on the right hand, he sank down in a darksome nook of it, on a pallet among straw, and covering himself up, turf, nightcap and all, under a coarse blanket, he was sound asleep before the old man had withdrawn the light, and shut the door of his clay chamber. "Oh that our boys were back again safe and sound!" cried the old woman, wringing her hands. "Safe and sound I fear we cannot expect them to be, Janet," replied the old man. "But oh that we had them back again, though it was to see them wounded as badly as that poor fellow! Much do I fear that they are both corpses on Drummossie Moor." "What will become of us!" cried the old woman, weeping bitterly; "what will become of this poor motherless lassie now, if her father be gone?" But, leaving this aged couple to complain, and John Smith to enjoy his repose, we must now return to poor Morag, whom, as you may recollect, gentlemen, we left hunted into covert by the two dragoons who had so closely pursued her. The patch of natural wood into which she dived was not large. It chiefly consisted of oaks and birches, which, though they had grown to a considerable size in certain parts, so that their wide-spreading heads had kept the knolls on which their stems stood, altogether free from the incumbrance of any kind of brushwood,--had yet in most places risen up thinner and smaller, leaving ample room and air around them to support thickets of the tallest broom and juniper bushes. It chanced that Morag was not altogether unacquainted with the nature of the place, having at one time, in earlier life, been hired to tend the cows of a farmer at no great distance from it. She was well aware that a rill, which had its origin in the higher grounds at some distance, came wimpling into the upper part of the wood, and thence, during its descent over the sloping surface of the ground, from its having met with certain obstructions, or from some other cause, it had worn itself a channel through the soft soil, to the depth of some six feet or so, but which was yet so narrow, that the ferns and bushes growing out of the undermined sods that fringed the edges of it, almost entirely covered it with one continued tangled and matted arch. Towards this rill Morag endeavoured to make her way through the tall broom, and, as she was doing so, she heard the dismounted trooper, who had by this time entered the wood after her, calling to his comrade, who sat mounted outside: