th exercise, dashed from the thicket into the open glade, accompanied
by his foster father, Torquil of the Oak. The latter, with equal
strength and address, turned the struggling hind on her back, and
holding her forefeet in his right hand, while he knelt on her body,
offered his skene with the left to the young chief, that he might cut
the animal's throat.

"It may not be, Torquil; do thine office, and take the assay thyself. I
must not kill the likeness of my foster--"

This was spoken with a melancholy smile, while a tear at the same time
stood in the speaker's eye. Torquil stared at his young chief for an
instant, then drew his sharp wood knife across the creature's throat
with a cut so swift and steady that the weapon reached the backbone.
Then rising on his feet, and again fixing a long piercing look on his
chief, he said: "As much as I have done to that hind would I do to any
living man whose ears could have heard my dault (foster son) so much as
name a white doe, and couple the word with Hector's name!"

If Simon had no reason before to keep himself concealed, this speech of
Torquil furnished him with a pressing one.

"It cannot be concealed, father Torquil," said Eachin: "it will all out
to the broad day."

"What will out? what will to broad day?" asked Torquil in surprise.

"It is the fatal secret," thought Simon; "and now, if this huge privy
councillor cannot keep silence, I shall be made answerable, I suppose,
for Eachin's disgrace having been blown abroad."

Thinking thus anxiously, he availed himself at the same time of his
position to see as much as he could of what passed between the afflicted
chieftain and his confidant, impelled by that spirit of curiosity which
prompts us in the most momentous, as well as the most trivial, occasions
of life, and which is sometimes found to exist in company with great
personal fear.

As Torquil listened to what Eachin communicated, the young man sank
into his arms, and, supporting himself on his shoulder, concluded his
confession by a whisper into his ear. Torquil seemed to listen with such
amazement as to make him incapable of crediting his ears. As if to be
certain that it was Eachin who spoke, he gradually roused the youth from
his reclining posture, and, holding him up in some measure by a grasp on
his shoulder, fixed on him an eye that seemed enlarged, and at the same
time turned to stone, by the marvels he listened to. And so wild waxed
the old man's vis