"Oh, sir, the river is rising a foot a-minute--take the bridle, I beseech you, and let me support the lady and the horse's flank--I will explain all when she is out of danger." So saying, I laid my shoulder to the work and urged him on; we had an easier task, and in another minute succeeded in getting safe out of that perilous passage. I now looked at our preserver; he was a handsome, tall, and vigorous man, about forty--evidently a soldier and gentleman. He lifted his daughter from the saddle; and while I recounted the particulars of her adventure, unclasped her habit and chafed her forehead; but all was of no avail. He looked distractedly, first at his daughter and then at me; and after a pause of contending emotions, rose, laid her across the pommel, placed his foot in the stirrup, and turning to me said, "I am embarrassed by many circumstances--take my blessings for this day's help--and forget us." "I can never forget." "Then take this trifling remembrance." He pulled a ring from his finger and handed it to me; threw himself into the saddle; placed his daughter across his body, and crying, ere I could say a word for sheer amazement, "Farewell, farewell!" and once more, with some emotion, "Farewell, sir, and may God bless you!" put spurs to his horse, and dashed off at full speed for a pass which leads into the wild country of the Misty Braes. Till they disappeared among the hills, I stood watching them from the bank where they had left me, bare-headed, numbed, and indignant; with the rain still pelting on me, and the ring between my fingers. It was a costly diamond; I pitched it after him with a curse, and bent my weary way towards Knowehead, a distance of full five miles, in a maze of uncertainty and speculation. She had not told her name, and she seemed to desire a concealment of her residence; her father's conduct more plainly evinced the same motive; many of the heads of the rebellion were still lurking with their families among the mountains of Ulster; the only house in the direction they had taken, at all likely to be the retreat of respectable persons, was the old Grange of Moyabel; and it was the property of a gentleman then abroad, but connected with all the chief Catholic rebels in the North. All this made me naturally conclude that these were some of that unhappy party; and when I considered that both daughter and father had been riding from different quarters to the same destination--for, as well as I could surmise from her vague account of herself, she had left the servant, behind whom she had come so far, to wait the arrival of her father, who had promised to join them there--I was able to satisfy myself of their being only on their way to Moyabel; and I therefore determined not to create suspicion by making useless inquiries as to the present family there, but to take the first opportunity of judging for myself of the new comers. But how, after such a dismissal,