"I should be happy to learn," I added, "that there is an honourable chance of your escaping from it." "You speak like a boy," returned MacGregor, in a low tone that growled like distant thunder--"like a boy, who thinks the auld gnarled oak can be twisted as easily as the young sapling. Can I forget that I have been branded as an outlaw--stigmatised as a traitor--a price set on my head as if I had been a wolf--my family treated as the dam and cubs of the hill-fox, whom all may torment, vilify, degrade, and insult--the very name which came to me from a long and noble line of martial ancestors, denounced, as if it were a spell to conjure up the devil with?" As he went on in this manner, I could plainly see, that, by the enumeration of his wrongs, he was lashing himself up into a rage, in order to justify in his own eyes the errors they had led him into. In this he perfectly succeeded; his light grey eyes contracting alternately and dilating their pupils, until they seemed actually to flash with flame, while he thrust forward and drew back his foot, grasped the hilt of his dirk, extended his arm, clenched his fist, and finally rose from his seat. "And they _shall_ find," he said, in the same muttered but deep tone of stifled passion, "that the name they have dared to proscribe--that the name of MacGregor--_is_ a spell to raise the wild devil withal. _They_ shall hear of my vengeance, that would scorn to listen to the story of my wrongs--The miserable Highland drover, bankrupt, barefooted,--stripped of all, dishonoured and hunted down, because the avarice of others grasped at more than that poor all could pay, shall burst on them in an awful change. They that scoffed at the grovelling worm, and trode upon him, may cry and howl when they see the stoop of the flying and fiery-mouthed dragon.--But why do I speak of all this?" he said, sitting down again, and in a calmer tone--"Only ye may opine it frets my patience, Mr. Osbaldistone, to be hunted like an otter, or a sealgh, or a salmon upon the shallows, and that by my very friends and neighbours; and to have as many sword-cuts made, and pistols flashed at me, as I had this day in the ford of Avondow, would try a saint's temper, much more a Highlander's, who are not famous for that gude gift, as ye may hae heard, Mr. Osbaldistone.--But as thing bides wi' me o' what Nicol said;--I'm vexed for the bairns--I'm vexed when I think o' Hamish and Robert living their father's life." And yielding to despondence on account of his sons, which he felt not upon his own, the father rested his head upon his hand. I was much affected, Will. All my life long I have been more melted by the distress under which a strong, proud, and powerful mind is compelled to give way, than by the more easily excited sorrows of softer dispositions. The desire of aiding him rushed strongly on my mind, notwithstanding the apparent difficulty, and even impossibility, of the task.