"How--how?" cried Huske, wildly; for the solemn and excited manner of MacGregor impressed him with a terrible conviction of truth; "my son, say you--my son?" "I have spoken but too truly," said the Highlander, while, heedless of what Huske might do with sword or pistol, he knelt, with a sob in his throat, and unfolding the bloody plaid, showed to the horror-stricken officer the dead body of a little golden-haired boy, whose features he could not fail to recognize. He covered his face with his hands, exclaiming-- "Oh, MacGregor, what dreadful deed is this I have done?" There was a long pause, and then Rob said-- "My people found your son asleep in his little bed at Inversnaid, and carefully preserved him until such time as he could be restored to you, his father, or friends. Hunted and proscribed as we are, treated by such as you like wolves or other wild beasts, a hundred difficulties were in the way of having the child thus restored; and the poor little fellow learned to love us, to be the playmate of my children, the sharer of our humble hearth and frugal board, while my good and gentle wife, who knew that the boy was motherless, nurtured him tenderly. Being certain that you would be with the army sent against Seaforth and the Spaniards, I brought hither the child that we might restore him, in the hope that for the good deed we had done you might allow, as we say in Scotland, bygones between us to be bygones; but, alas! this is the restoration that Helen's heart foreboded!" "How, Macgregor?" "When she predicted so often that the child was too sweet in temper and too fair in form to find a place on earth; and now, woe worth the hour! he has been sent by his father's hand to Heaven, from whence he came!" When MacGregor ceased, Huske had cast himself on his knees among the heather, cowering down, in wretchedness, with his face buried in his hands, and sobbing heavily; while the former covered up the little body, tenderly and gently, in his plaid, lest the sight of its blood should too much shock the murderer. "Go, Major Huske,--return to your men," said he, laying a hand kindly on the shoulder of the officer; "my hand can never inflict on you a deeper wound than your own has done. From my soul I pity you! When seeking to wrong me--wrong me cruelly and foully--you have destroyed your fair little boy, whom I was learning to love as if he had been my own; but," added Rob, taking off his bonnet and pointing upward, "his pure spirit is among the flowers that the angels will gather at the foot of His throne who is above us." "Oh, MacGregor," groaned Huske, "end, I pray you, my existence!" "That I may not do; and I pray you to avoid me when next we meet." "Where?" asked Huske, incoherently.