The stranger smiled: "Since to your home A destined errant-knight I come, 475 Announced by prophet sooth and old, Doomed, doubtless, for achievement bold, I'll lightly front each high emprise, For one kind glance of those bright eyes. Permit me, first, the task to guide 480 Your fairy frigate o'er the tide." The maid with smile suppressed and sly, The toil unwonted saw him try; For seldom sure, if e'er before, His noble hand had grasped an oar. 485 Yet with main strength his strokes he drew, And o'er the lake the shallop flew; With heads erect, and whimpering cry, The hounds behind their passage ply. Nor frequent does the bright oar break 490 The dark'ning mirror of the lake, Until the rocky isle they reach, And moor their shallop on the beach. XXV The stranger viewed the shore around, 'Twas all so close with copsewood bound, 495 Nor track nor pathway might declare That human foot frequented there, Until the mountain-maiden showed A clambering, unsuspected road, That winded through the tangled screen, 500 And opened on a narrow green, Where weeping birch and willow round With their long fibres swept the ground. Here, for retreat in dangerous hour, Some chief had framed a rustic bower. 505 XXVI It was a lodge of ample size, But strange of structure and device; Of such materials as around The workman's hand had readiest found. Lopped of their boughs, their hoar trunks bared, 510 And by the hatchet rudely squared, To give the walls their destined height, The sturdy oak and ash unite; While moss and clay and leaves combined To fence each crevice from the wind. 515 The lighter pine-trees overhead, Their slender length for rafters spread, And withered heath and rushes dry Supplied a russet canopy. Due westward, fronting to the green, 520 A rural portico was seen, Aloft on native pillars borne, Of mountain fir with bark unshorn, Where Ellen's hand had taught to twine The ivy and Idaean vine, 525 The clematis, the favored flower Which boasts the name of virgin-bower, And every hardy plant could bear Loch Katrine's keen and searching air. An instant in this porch she stayed 530 And gaily to the stranger said, "On heaven and on thy lady call, And enter the enchanted hall!" XXVII