mountain fair, advanced as if to secure a similar favour; but Alice, snatching up her basket, escaped up the rocky bank as fleetly as a roe, and, turning round and laughing, called something out to him in Gaelic, which he answered in the same tone and language; then, waving her hand to Edward, she resumed her road, and was soon lost among the thickets, though they continued for some time to hear her lively carol, as she proceeded gaily on her solitary journey. They now again entered the gorge of the cavern, and stepping into the boat, the Highlander pushed off, and, taking advantage of the morning breeze, hoisted a clumsy sort of sail, while Evan assumed the helm, directing their course, as it appeared to Waverley, rather higher up the lake than towards the place of his embarkation on the preceding night. As they glided along the silver mirror, Evan opened the conversation with a panegyric upon Alice, who, he said, was both CANNY and FENDY; and was, to the boot of all that, the best dancer of a strathspey in the whole strath. Edward assented to her praises so far as he understood them, yet could not help regretting that she was condemned to such a perilous and dismal life. 'Oich! for that,' said Evan, 'there is nothing in Perthshire that she need want, if she ask her father to fetch it, unless it be too hot or too heavy.' 'But to be the daughter of a cattle-stealer--a common thief!' 'Common thief!--no such thing: Donald Bean Lean never LIFTED less than a drove in his life.' 'Do you call him an uncommon thief, then?' 'No; he that steals a cow from a poor widow, or a stirk from a cotter, is a thief; he that lifts a drove from a Sassenach laird is a gentleman-drover. And, besides, to take a tree from the forest, a salmon from the river, a deer from the hill, or a cow from a Lowland strath, is what no Highlander need ever think shame upon.' 'But what can this end in, were he taken in such an appropriation?' 'To be sure he would DIE FOR THE LAW, as many a pretty man has done before him.' 'Die for the law!' 'Ay; that is, with the law, or by the law; be strapped up on the KIND gallows of Crieff, [Footnote: See Note 16.] where his father died, and his goodsire died, and where I hope he'll live to die himsell, if he's not shot, or slashed, in a creagh.' 'You HOPE such a death for your friend, Evan?' 'And that do I e'en; would you have me wish him to die on a bundle of wet straw in yon den of his, like a mangy tyke?' 'But what becomes of Alice, then?' 'Troth, if such an accident were to happen, as her father would not need her help ony langer, I ken nought to hinder me to marry her mysell.' 'Gallantly resolved,' said Edward; 'but, in the meanwhile, Evan, what has your father-in-law (that shall be, if he have the good fortune to be hanged) done with the Baron's cattle?'