"I seek to do them no wrong, Aileen. The Rhinns are ours by right, and Islay is ours by the King's own charter." "The _people_ were there before kings or charters were known in the land. God gave the hills and the isles to the children of the Gael, and His curse will fall on all who seek to dispossess them by virtue of sheepskins and waxen seals. Did not a Lord of the Isles say that he little valued a right which depended on the possession of a scrap of parchment? Beware, Lauchlan Maclean! beware! for the hand of fate is upon you!" Scared by her words and her fury, as her shrill voice awoke the inmost recesses of the vault, Sir Lauchlan said-- "In the name of the mother of God, Aileen Glas, I beseech you to be composed, and to tell me of what I must beware!" She snatched up the spulebane of the wolf, and, after looking through it by holding it between her and the fire, cast it aside with a shriek, saying-- "Lauchlan of Duairt, listen to me, for never may you hear my voice again!" "It may be so, Aileen; we sail for Islay to-morrow!" "Well, do not land upon a _Thursday_, and do not drink of the well that flows at the head of Loch Groynard, for I can see that one Maclean will be slain there, and _lie headless_! Away! leave me now! In the glen you will meet those who will tell you more!" and she muffled her face in her plaid as Sir Lauchlan left her. "I can easily avoid a landing on Thursday, and a draught of that devilish well too; but whom shall I meet in the glen?" thought he, as he mounted and galloped homewards to Duairt, glad the horrid interview was over. As he rode round the base of Benmore, the waning moon began to show half her disc above the black shoulder of the mighty mountain, and a pale light played along the broad waves of Loch-na-keal, which lay on his left, and were rolled in foam against the bold headlands and columnar ridges, which are covered with coats of ivy and tufted by remains of oak and ash woods that overhung the salt billows of that western sea, where the scart, the mew, and the heron were screaming. On, on rode our chief, treasuring the words of Grey Aileen in his heart, and soon he saw the lights in his own castle of Duairt glittering before him about a mile off, and anon he could perceive the outline of the great keep as it towered in the pale moonlight on its high cliff that breasts the Sound of Mull. But hark! the voice of a woman made him pause. He checked his horse and looked around him.