They were married. We will pass over the appearance of the bride, her pale beauty, her rich lace, the splendour of all the accessories by which the wealth of her father, of her husband, and the solicitude of her kind friends surrounded her, and come to the crisis in our story--a crisis in which a lamentable fatality seemed to rule the destinies of the chief actors in our little drama. The minister of St. John's Church had just pronounced the nuptial blessing, and the pale bride was in her mother's arms, while the officers of the Black Watch were crowding round Douglas with their hearty congratulations; a buzz of voices had filled the large withdrawing room, as a hum of gladness succeeded the solemn but impressive monotony of the marriage service, when the sharp rattle of drums and the shrill sound of the fifes ringing in the Southgate of Perth struck upon their ears, and the measured march of feet, mingling with the rising huzzahs of the people, woke the echoes of every close and wynd. A foreboding smote the heart of Captain Douglas. He sprang to a window and saw the gleam of arms--the glitter of bayonets and Lochaber axes, with the waving of plumed bonnets above the heads of a crowd which poured along the sunny vista of the Southgate; and, as the troops passed, led by a mounted officer whose left arm was in a sling--a bronzed, war-worn, and weatherbeaten band--their tartans were recognised as well as the tattered colours which streamed in ribbons on the wind, and their name went from mouth to mouth:-- "The Lost Regiment--the Highlanders of Montgomery!" A low cry bunt from Emmy; she threw up her clasped hands, and sank in a dead faint at her mother's feet. All was consternation in the house of Stuart of Tullynairn; and the marriage guests gazed at the passing soldiers, as at some fascinating but unreal pageant--but on they marched, cheering, to the barracks, with drums beating and pipes playing; and now the mounted officer, who had been gazing wistfully at the crowded windows, stoops from his saddle and whispers a few words to another--Alaster the One-handed, now a captain--then he turns his horse, and, dismounting at the door, is heard to ascend the stair; and in another moment, Louis Charters, sallow, thin, and hollow-eyed, by long toil and suffering, his left arm in a sling and his right cheek scarred by a shot, stands amid all these gaily-attired guests in his fighting jacket, the scarlet of which had long since become threadbare and purple. He immediately approached Emmy, who had now partially recovered and gazed at him, as one might gaze at a spectre, when Douglas threw himself forward with a hand on his sword. "What is the meaning of all this?" said Louis, who grew ashy pale, and whose voice sank into Emmy's soul; "have you all forgotten me--Louis Charters of Montgomery's Regiment?" "No," replied Douglas, "but your presence here at such a time is most unfeeling and inopportune."