"Your tongue has a Lowland twang to it, whatever little to please a Lowlander it spoke," said the stranger. "You are right my lad; what you prattled there, by yourself, as you thought, was treason--with a vengeance. Know you not that these mountains are filled with those who would gladly tie your arms behind your back and gallop you off to Neith jail, for half such sentiments. Or"--and here the voice became tinged with a profound sadness, "or, have you been, young as you seem, like myself, a defender of that most unlucky young soldier, my master, Charles Stewart, who, a hunted refugee, with an army cut to pieces and a realm lost, is skulking to-day in some corner of the country with death at his heels and a price upon his head--instead of a crown-royal." Andrew drew himself back proudly and stared into his questioner's face. "Sir," he exclaimed, "I see you _are_ a soldier! You may be a Southerner as well. I care not. God save the Prince! I love him! God defend him! So will say my father and every man and woman at Windlestrae! I was too young--so they pleased to think--to fight at Culloden Moor, and my father has just tided over a long sickness. But for these things we had both been there--and dead, by now, 'tis very likely." The stranger fairly leaped from his resting-place. "Your hand, your hand, young sir!" he demanded, his face suffused with color. "Rash as you are loyal, let me press it! I, too, love the Prince, our master; and I, too, hope yet to see him make a footstool of his enemies. My name is Geoffry Armitage--Lord Armitage I am oftenest called. Windlestrae, said you? Then I speak to one of those to whom I am sent on an errand from which yonder villainous tree did its best to let me. Are you Peter--no, Andrew Boyd, the son of Gilbert Boyd, who owns the manor of Windlestrae?" "I am, sir," replied Andrew, in deepening surprise: "this very nook of the woodland we stand in belongs to my father and is within our farm. The manor house and fields are but half-an-hour from this spot; below the hill-foot yonder." "Fortune favors me at last!" cried Lord Geoffry, seating himself again on the trunk. "I bring a long message from the minister of Sheilar Kirk, that I have to give to your father. I am a fugitive, as you may have already guessed from the disparity between a title and my dress. A fugitive? Yes, and one who has often thought that his life might better have been left where the cause for which he would have laid it down was lost--on Culloden Moor." "Culloden!" exclaimed Andrew, "Oh! sir, were you truly in the fight? Tell me more of it, I beseech you." "Ay--for whatever in my own history is worth telling you or your father begins with it!" the ruined nobleman replied in a melancholy tone. He paused. Andrew heard him murmur, "Can I speak of _that_ day so soon?" But he composed his utterance, and after a quick glance about them looked up at Andrew, to begin his brief account of himself. CHAPTER II.