"And I will back you, Greumoch, though Breadalbane is my own kinsman," said Rob Roy. "We are Campbells by day, oich! oich!" said Greumoch, in a tone of singularly bitter irony, which drew muttered oaths from his companions; "but by night----" "We are MacGregors like our fathers, and again the sons of Alpine!" said Rob, starting to his feet. "'S Rioghal mo dhream! Forward, lads! MacAleister shouts to us--the bloodhound has again got the scent." The chieftain was right--the noble dog had discovered the trail; and once more the pursuit was resumed in a direction due north-west. As day broke, the distant hill-tops became yellow, and the wild moor gradually lightened around them. Rob and his followers had just doffed their bonnets, in reverence to the rising sun--a superstitious act, old as the days of Baal and the Druids--when a fox suddenly crossed their path. "Shoot, MacAleister, shoot!" exclaimed a dozen voices in an excited manner, for the son of the arrow-maker was the best marksman on the shores of Loch Lomond. "But the creagh--the caterans!" he urged, while unslinging his long Spanish gun. "They cannot hear the shot, and, even if they did, the fox must not escape." MacAleister took aim and fired. Then a cheer of satisfaction burst from the MacGregors, as the fox rolled over, feet uppermost, dead, about two hundred yards off; and the pursuit was resumed with fresh alacrity, as it was then a common Celtic belief, that to meet an armed man, when proceeding on a hostile expedition, portended success; but to have your path crossed by a four-footed animal without killing it, or by a woman without drawing blood from her forehead, ensured defeat and flight. Roused by the report of the musket from their lair among the green feathery bracken, more than one red roebuck started up and fled towards the desert of Rannoch, on the skirts of which the MacGregors were now entering; and closely following the footsteps of the hound, they drew near the hills that bordered the vast sea of bog and heather. "Halt!" cried Rob Roy; "do you see that?--it is another omen." As he spoke, a black carnivorous raven daringly soused down upon a poor little lamb that was cropping a patch of grass near its dam, and, in a second, picked out his eyes. As the lamb bleated loudly, the mountain bird next seized and tore its tongue, but a shot from MacGregor's steel pistol killed them both. "It foretells good fortune," said he, "and that we shall soon pounce on the MacRaes, even as the raven pounced on the lamb." Greumoch proposed that they should light a fire of dry heather-root and broil a collop from the dead lamb; but Rob Roy, as he re-loaded and primed his pistol, now detected a faint column of blue smoke that rose at the edge of the moor; and, after breakfasting on a little meal and water, he ordered all to advance, but cautiously, towards it.