"Hark!" cried Wallace, "the horses are now descending the craig. That must satisfy you, honest Halbert." With these words he flew across the grass, and entering the house, met the returning Marion, who had just bade farewell to Hambledon. She rushed into his arms, and with the excess of a disturbed and uncertain joy, fainted on his neck. Her gentle spirit had been too powerfully excited by the preceding scenes. Unaccustomed to tumult of any king, and nursed in the bosom of fondness till now, no blast had blown on her tender form, no harshness had ever ruffled the blissful serenity of her mind. What then was the shock of this evening's violence! Her husband pursued as a murderer; herself exposed to the midnight air, and dragged by the hands of merciless soldiers to betray the man she loved! All these scenes were new to her; and though a kind of preternatural strength had supported her over, when she fell once more into her husband's extended arms, she seemed there to have found again her shelter, and the pillow whereon her harassed soul might repose. "My life! My best treasure! Preserver of thy Wallace! Look on him!" exclaimed he; "bless him with a smile from those dear eyes." His voice, his caresses, soon restored her to sensibility and recollection. She wept on his breast, and with love's own eloquence, thanked Heaven that he had escaped the search and the arrows of his enemies. "But my dear lady," interrupted Halbert, "remember my master must not stay here. You know the English commander said he must fly far away. Nay, spies may even now be lurking to betray him." "You are right," cried she. "My Wallace, you must depart. Should the guard arrive soon, your flight may be prevented. You must go now--but, oh! whither?" "Not far distant, my love. In going from thee, I leave behind all that makes my life precious to me; how then can I go far away? No! there are recesses among the Cartlane Craigs, I discovered while hunting, and which I believe have been visited by no mortal foot but my own. There I will be, my Marion, before sunrise; and before it sets, thither you must send Halbert, to tell me how you fare. Three notes from thine own sweet strains of Thusa ha measg na reultan mor,** blown by his pipe, shall be a sign to me that he is there; and I will come forth to hear tidings of thee." **Thusa ha measg na reultan mor, etc., are the beginning words of an old Gaelic ditty, the English of which runs thus: "Thou who art amid the stars, move to thy bed with music," etc.-(1809.) "Ah, my Wallace, let me go with thee!" "What, dearest!" returned he, "to live amidst rocks and streams! to expose thy tender self, and thine unborn infant, to all the accidents of such a lodging!" "But are not you going to so rough, so dangerous a lodging?" asked she. "O! would not rocks and streams be Heaven's paradise to me, when blessed by the presence of my husband? Ah! let me go!"