Would to heaven we could stop here, and gratify the reader with a wedding, and as much matrimonial happiness as poor mortality can possibly inherit!--But it may not be. As Lockhart says beautifully of Sir Walter, we hear "the sound of the muffled drum." Sir Roger and all the friends of Mr William Graham were opposed to his union with Miss Palmer, as Graham always called her. Her own father, too, was opposed to her forming a connection with the son of one who had treated him so cruelly, and, as he thought, unjustly--and it became manifest to William, as he was in every sense of the word his own master, that had he his fair betrothed in the leas of Middlefield, he might set them all at defiance, and effect their union peaceably, according to the rules of the church. In an evil hour, Helen consented to leave her father's house by night, along with her William, and on horseback, to take their way across the Border for Cumberland. They had reached the parish of Kirkconnel about two o'clock in the morning, and were giving their horses a mouthful of water in the little stream called Kirtle, when a shot was heard in the immediate neighbourhood--it was heard, alas! by two only, for the third was dying, and in the act of falling from her seat in the saddle. She was caught by a servant, and by her lover; but she could only say--"I am gone--I am gone!" before breathing her last. Oh, curse upon the hand that fired the shot? It was, indeed, an accursed hand, but a fatal mistake. It was one of the bloody persecutors of Lag's troop, who, having been appointed to watch at this spot for some Covenanters who were expected to be passing on horseback into England, in order to escape from the savage cruelty of their persecutors, had immediately, and in drunken blindness, fired upon this inoffensive group. The ball, alas! took too fatal effect in the heart of Helen Palmer; and it was on her, and not as Allan Cunningham represents it, "on Helen Irving, the daughter of the laird of Kirkconnel," that the following most pathetic verses were written-- "I wish I were where Helen lies; Night and day on me she cries: Oh, that I were where Helen lies, On fair Kirkconnel lea! "Oh, Helen fair beyond compare, I'll make a garland of thy hair; Shall bind my heart for ever mair, Until the day I dee. "Curst be the heart that thought the thought, And curst the hand that fired the shot, When in my arms burd Helen dropped On fair Kirkconnel lea!" XII.--THE CAIRNY CAVE OF GAVIN MUIR.