"Hoigh! hui-uigh!" cried old Iverach, capering with Highland agility on hearing the letters read. "Hui-uigh!" he exclaimed, making the weapons clatter on the wall with his wild and startling shout, while he tossed his bonnet up to the vaulted roof; "and so braw Maister Ronald is going to the clorious wars, to shoot the French loons like the muircocks o’ Strathisla, or the bonnie red roes o’ Benmore! Hoigh! Got tam! auld Iverach’s son sall gang too, and follow the laird’s, as my ain faither and mony a braw shentleman did auld Sir Ian Mhor to the muster o’ Glenfinan. And when promotion is in the way, braw Maister Ronald will no forget puir Evan Iverach, the son of his faither’s piper, that follows him for love to the far-awa’ land. And when the pipers blaw the onset, neither o’ them will forget the bonnie banks of Lochisla, and the true hearts they have left behind them there. And when the onset is nigh, let them shout the war-cry of their race: my prave prothers cried it on the ramparts of Ticonderago,[*] where the auld plack watch were mown doon like grass, in a land far peyond the isles, where the sun sets in the west." [*] In that sanguinary affair the 42nd Highlanders, or old Black-Watch, lost 43 officers, commissioned and non-commissioned, and had 603 privates killed and wounded; and "to many a heart and home in the Highlands did this disastrous though glorious intelligence bring desolation and mourning." As this enthusiastic retainer left the apartment to communicate the news to the rest of the household, old Mr. Stuart turned to gaze on his son. The arrival of these letters had caused a vast change in their feelings within the last five minutes; all traces of discord had vanished, and the softest feelings of our nature remained behind. *CHAPTER IV.* *THE DEPARTURE.* "Farewell, farewell, a last adieu! Adieu, ye hills and dales so sweet; Adieu, ye gurgling rills, for you And I again may never meet! Sweet lovely scene, with charms replete! Backward my longing eyes I turn, Leave your stupendous rocks with woe, To yonder cloud-capped town I go, Ah! never to return." _Colin Maclaurin._ Sorrow for the sudden departure of Ronald was the prevailing sentiment in the tower of Lochisla, which old Janet the housekeeper caused to re-echo with her ceaseless lamentations, poured forth either in broken broad Scotch, or in her more poetical and descriptive Gaelic, for the going forth of the bold boy whom she had watched over and nursed from childhood with the tenderness of a mother.