compassion
for his forsaken owner.

"Poor thing," said the smith, "there may be a trick in this too, for
thou dost but as thou art taught. Yet, as I promised to protect this
poor creature, I must not leave her in a swoon, if it be one, were it
but for manhood's sake."

Returning, and approaching his troublesome charge, he was at once
assured, from the change of her complexion, either that she was actually
in the deepest distress, or had a power of dissimulation beyond the
comprehension of man--or woman either.

"Young woman," he said, with more of kindness than he had hitherto been
able even to assume, "I will tell you frankly how I am placed. This
is St. Valentine's Day, and by custom I was to spend it with my fair
Valentine. But blows and quarrels have occupied all the morning, save
one poor half hour. Now, you may well understand where my heart and my
thoughts are, and where, were it only in mere courtesy, my body ought to
be."

The glee maiden listened, and appeared to comprehend him.

"If you are a true lover, and have to wait upon a chaste Valentine, God
forbid that one like me should make a disturbance between you! Think
about me no more. I will ask of that great river to be my guide to where
it meets the ocean, where I think they said there was a seaport; I will
sail from thence to La Belle France, and will find myself once more in
a country in which the roughest peasant would not wrong the poorest
female."

"You cannot go to Dundee today," said the smith. "The Douglas people are
in motion on both sides of the river, for the alarm of the morning has
reached them ere now; and all this day, and the next, and the whole
night which is between, they will gather to their leader's standard,
like Highlandmen at the fiery cross. Do you see yonder five or six
men who are riding so wildly on the other side of the river? These are
Annandale men: I know them by the length of their lances, and by the way
they hold them. An Annandale man never slopes his spear backwards, but
always keeps the point upright, or pointed forward."

"And what of them?" said the glee maiden. "They are men at arms and
soldiers. They would respect me for my viol and my helplessness."

"I will say them no scandal," answered the smith. "If you were in their
own glens, they would use you hospitably, and you would have nothing to
fear; but they are now on an expedition. All is fish that comes to their
net. There are amongst them who would take