We were in high spirits with the expectation of meeting the French in the morning; young Keith alone was sad, melancholy, and silent, and it seemed to me that he drank deeply, an unusual circumstance with him. Then suddenly he appeared to reflect, and ceasing his potations, resolutely passed alike the wine-jar and the cognac bottle. "Are you ill, Keith?" asked Douglas, kindly. "Not a bit of it," interrupted Tom Kirkton; "it is only the Westphalia wine that partially disagrees with him. Is it not so, friend Probe? Try some more brandy. I took it from a French baggage cart; 'tis the spoil of my sword and pistol. Come, Jamie Keith-- "How stands the glass around? For shame, ye take no care, my boys!" But Keith shook his head and turned away. "Pshaw, boy! don't imitate any virtue of the Spartans to-night," said Probe, our surgeon; "who can say that we shall all be together at this hour to-morrow?" "Ah, who indeed!" muttered young Keith, with an air so melancholy that we all paused to observe him. "Look at me, Keith," said Captain Douglas, gravely; "there is something wrong with you to-night." "I grant you that there is," replied the young lieutenant, turning his pale and handsome face to the inquirer. "I have in my heart--and I cannot help telling you--a solemn presentiment that I shall not survive the battle of to-morrow. Yet observe me, gentlemen, observe me well and closely all of you, and see if I shall blench before the enemy, or belie the name of my forefathers." With one voice we endeavoured to ridicule this unfortunate idea, or to wean him from it; but he only replied by sadly shaking his head. After a pause, he said-- "I trust that you will not laugh at what I am about to tell you; but indeed I care little whether you do so or not. An hour ago, after our halt, I fell asleep in my cloak at the foot of that tree, and while there I dreamed of my home, of my father's house at Inverugie. I saw the Ugie flowing between its banks of yellow broom, I heard the hum of the honeybee among the purple heather bells, while the sweet perfume of the hawthorn passed me on the wind. Then I heard the German Sea chafing on the sandy knowes in the distance, and all the sense of boyhood and of home grew strong within me. But when I looked towards our old hall of Inverugie, it was roofless and windowless, the long grass grew on its cold hearthstone, and there the nettle and the ivy waved in the wind, while the black gleds were building their nests by scores in the holes of the ruined wall; and that dream daunts me still. "Why--why--what of it?" we asked together. "Because when one of our family dreams of a gled the hour of death is nigh. I have never known it fail, and so it has been ever since Thomas the Rhymer sat on a block near the castle (to this day called the Tammas stane), and as a vision came before him, he stretched his hands towards the house, saying--