r country in tourney with your followers."

"And what leisure is there for this?" exclaimed the young chief,
starting as if something horrid had occurred to his imagination. "How
many days are there betwixt this hour and Palm Sunday, and what is to
chance then? A list inclosed, from which no man can stir, more than the
poor bear who is chained to his stake. Sixty living men, the best
and fiercest--one alone excepted!--which Albyn can send down from her
mountains, all athirst for each other's blood, while a king and his
nobles, and shouting thousands besides, attend, as at a theatre, to
encourage their demoniac fury! Blows clang and blood flows, thicker,
faster, redder; they rush on each other like madmen, they tear each
other like wild beasts; the wounded are trodden to death amid the feet
of their companions! Blood ebbs, arms become weak; but there must be
no parley, no truce, no interruption, while any of the maimed wretches
remain alive! Here is no crouching behind battlements, no fighting with
missile weapons: all is hand to hand, till hands can no longer be raised
to maintain the ghastly conflict! If such a field is so horrible in
idea, what think you it will be in reality?"

The glover remained silent.

"I say again, what think you?"

"I can only pity you, Conachar," said Simon. "It is hard to be the
descendant of a lofty line--the son of a noble father--the leader by
birth of a gallant array, and yet to want, or think you want, for
still I trust the fault lies much in a quick fancy, that over estimates
danger--to want that dogged quality which is possessed by every game
cock that is worth a handful of corn, every hound that is worth a
mess of offal. But how chanced it that, with such a consciousness of
inability to fight in this battle, you proffered even now to share your
chiefdom with my daughter? Your power must depend on your fighting this
combat, and in that Catharine cannot help you."

"You mistake, old man," replied Eachin: "were Catharine to look kindly
on the earnest love I bear her, it would carry me against the front of
the enemies with the mettle of a war horse. Overwhelming as my sense
of weakness is, the feeling that Catharine looked on would give me
strength. Say yet--oh, say yet--she shall be mine if we gain the combat,
and not the Gow Chrom himself, whose heart is of a piece with his
anvil, ever went to battle so light as I shall do! One strong passion is
conquered by another."

"This is f