"What a blessed chance was it which led me to stay here a couple of hours later than I purposed; simply to finish bringing down that oak! Ah, my lord! You do not know my father! I do. You will be welcome a hundred times to our house, and all that we have. It will go hard if you quit Windlestrae, except in safety. Let us lose no more time in getting down to the Manor, and my father's presence. To him must you tell over your story and at once receive the earnest of his help." "God bless you both! and after a night's rest I shall be better able to hear and discuss new plans for my welfare," said Lord Geoffry. "A little food might not be amiss either," he added carelessly. There was a peculiar sweetness in his smile and an air of dignity which had already made its fascination felt upon young Andrew Boyd. "Ay, this _is_ a soldier indeed," the lad thought, "able to endure peril, and hunger, and thirst, and fatigue, and laugh over them!" The boy caught up his bonnet and plaid and thrust the axe under the oak's trunk. "Take my arm, my lord," he urged courteously. The wearied man accepted it, and they set out. "There are some questions I ought to ask, friend Andrew, while we go," said the young nobleman, as they entered a narrow, stony path leading upward from the glade. The sunless sky was still bright overhead. "First of all, have the soldiery been prowling around your Manor or its neighborhood?" "Until lately they have scarcely shown themselves near us. Colonel Danforth and his dragoons are stationed at Neith--as you too well know--with orders from the Duke of Cumberland to arrest any suspected Jacobites. But we have seen nothing of Danforth or his band." "And what of the Duke himself and the garrison to the northeast, at Fort Augustus?" "They have been equally quiet. The Manor lies midway between both garrisons; the troopers have harried the settlements closer to their hand. But--but--there is a better reason, my lord, for Windlestrae's being let alone." "And what is that? Your father's friend, at Sheilar, I think hinted at some special one. I did not pay the heed which I should to his words." "Why, my lord, my grandfather was an Englishman like yourself; and my father lived thirty years upon English ground, and spoke the English tongue before he came hither to live. Our Scottish neighbors have always counted us Whigs! They have never ceased to suspect my father of favoring the cause of King George--though he has said many a bold word for the Lost Cause. Worse still, my father was too ill to enlist under the Prince, as he would gladly have done; and this has set our neighbors yet more bitterly against him. We have no character as patriots, sir." "You think that the English troops in the town and at the Fort hold your father a good partisan of their own king?"