"To the heart's core," was the emphatic reply. "Oh, mhuire as truidh! mhuire as truidh! that I should ever have it to say--I, whose fathers have eaten the bread of his race for generations--ay, since the _first_ handful of earth was laid there to form the Moat of Urr--yea, yea, since first the Urr waters ran, and leaves grew in the wood of Dalbeattie!" "What has happened?" "His people have this day slain my brother Donacha MacKim, near the Bush aboon Tracquair, and have carried off his daughter, who was the love of my youngest son; but I have seven--SEVEN sons, each taller and stronger than myself, and I will have sure vengeance on Douglas, if he grants it not to me; and this I have sworn by the cross of St. Cuthbert, and by the soul of her I love best on earth, my wife Meg." The black eyes of the gigantic smith glared with genuine Celtic fury and hate as he said this; he beat the floor with his roughly-shod feet, and his strong fingers played nervously with the shaft of his mace, the chain and morning-star of which (a ball a pound in weight, furnished with four sharp iron spikes) lay on the floor. Gray, as he surveyed him, reflected that it was extremely fortunate that the smith's fealty to Douglas had been broken, otherwise he might have proved a very unpleasant companion for the night in that small and solitary hostelry, situated, as it was, in a hostile and lawless district. This meeting, however, taught Gray to be wary, and thus, though knowing the country well, he affected to be a stranger. "Is the abbot of Tongland at Thrave?" he asked. "No; the earl, in sport, poured a ladleful of gold down the throat of the Raeberry warder; so his father confessor pronounced a malediction upon him, and retired to the abbey at Tongland, in disgust and despair at his cruelty." "How far is it from hence to the clachan?" "About ten miles." "And to the abbey?" "It is beside the clachan."----"Good." During that night Gray slept with his door and window well secured, with his sword drawn under his head, and his armour on a chair by his bedside, to be ready for any emergency. The lassitude incident to his long journey on horseback by such rough roads--for then they went straight over hill and down valley, through forest, swamp, and river--made him sleep long and late on his bed of freshly-pulled heather; thus the noon of the next was far advanced before he set out once more. Malise MacKim, his sullen acquaintance of the preceding evening, conducted him for some distance beyond the Urr, and told him, what Gray already knew well, that if he wished to reach the clachan of Tongland, he must pass the Loch of Carlinwark on his right, and pursue the road that lay through the wood on the left bank of the Dee. "And whither go you, my friend?" he asked, as the gigantic smith was about to leave him. "To join my seven sons, and scheme our vengeance; yet what can mortal vengeance avail against the earl of Douglas?"----"How?" said Gray; "in what manner?"