While these malefactors were in the hands of the executioner, a lad of fourteen, the only survivor of the catastrophe, was seen to crawl out of the grotto. Bayard ordered every aid to be rendered him which his state required, and could not refrain from tears while listening to his lamentable tale. The boy related that when the smoke began to spread in the cavern, the nobles, resolving to die at least like soldiers, wanted to sally forth, sword in hand, but were prevented by the peasants, who fell upon them and disarmed them, saying, ‘You have led us hither, and here with us you shall die!’ Thus, a few moments before a common doom was to destroy both nobles and serfs, a horrible strife had arisen between them in the darkness of the cave. ‘And thou, my friend,’ asked Bayard, ‘by what miracle hast thou escaped death?’ ‘I had remarked,’ answered the lad, ‘a feeble ray of daylight in a corner of the grotto, and applied my mouth to the crevice through which it passed. I soon fainted, but this small portion of fresh air preserved my life. When I recovered my senses, I remembered all that had passed, but I was alone, and it took me a long time to crawl out of the grotto.’ ‘All thy companions,’ answered Bayard, ‘have been buried, by my orders, in consecrated ground; and behold! there hang their assassins!’ Unfortunately the history of our land is tarnished with similar deeds of atrocity. A cave in the Isle of Egg, one of the Hebrides, has a very narrow entrance, through which one can hardly creep on knees and hands, but it rises steep and lofty within, and runs into the bowels of the rock to the depth of 255 measured feet. The rude and stony bottom of this cave is strewed with the bones of men, women, and children, the sad relics of the ancient inhabitants of the island, 200 in number, of whose destruction the following story is related. ‘The Macdonalds, of the Isle of Egg, a people dependent on Clanranald, had done some injury to the Laird of Macleod. The tradition of the isle says that it was by a personal attack on the chieftain, in which his back was broken; but that of the other isles bears that the injury was offered to two or three of the Macleods, who, landing upon Egg, and behaving insolently towards the islanders, were bound hand and foot, and turned adrift in a boat, which the winds and waves safely conducted to Skye. To avenge the offence given, Macleod sailed with such a body of men as rendered resistance hopeless. The natives, fearing his vengeance, concealed themselves in the cavern; and, after strict search, the Macleods went on board their galleys, after doing what mischief they could, concluding the inhabitants had left the isle. But next morning they espied from their vessels a man upon the island, and, immediately landing again, they traced his retreat, by means of a light snow on the ground, to the cavern. Macleod then summoned the subterraneous garrison, and demanded