. Again the shout hath come, and the impatient chiefs wait
for my return. But"----

The warrior seemed to writhe during the conflict. His hands were
clenched, and every muscle stiffened with agony. Scorn at his own
weakness, and dread, horrible undefinable dread, as he felt the
omnipotent power mastering his proud spirit. The man who would have
laughed at the shaking of a spear, and the loud rush of the battle,
quailed before a woman's hate and a woman's love.

"And what is thy request to-night?" said Holt.

The stranger answered in a voice of thunder--

"Thy daughter!"

Tyrone, for it was he, seemed nigh choking with the emotion he sought to
suppress.

"Nay," he continued, "it must not be. Oh! did I love her less, she had
been mine!"

"Thine?" suddenly retorted her father, somewhat scornfully. "And who
gave thee this power over woman's spirit? Thou hast not even had speech
of her, much less the means to win her favour."

An almost supernatural expression seemed to gather on the features of
the chieftain. His eye, rolling through the vista of past years, began
to pause, appalled as it approached the dark threshold of the future. He
appeared lost to the presence of surrounding objects, as he thus
exclaimed with a terrific solemnity--

"When the dark-browed Norah nursed me on her lap, and her eye, though
dark to outward sense, saw through the dim veil of destiny, it was thus
she sung as she guarded my slumbers, and the hated Sassenach was in the
hall:--

"'Rest thee, baby! light and darkness
Mingling o'er thy path shall play;
Hope shall flee when thou pursuest,
Lost amid life's trackless way.

"'Rest thee, baby! woman's breast
Thou shalt darken o'er with woe;
None thou lookest on or lovest,
Joy or hope hereafter know.
Many a maid thy glance shall rue,
Where it smites it shall subdue.'

"It was an evil hour, old man, when I looked upon thy daughter."

Holt, though of a stout and resolute temper, was yet daunted by this
bold and unlooked-for address. He trembled as he gazed on the mysterious
being before him, gifted, as it seemed, with some supernatural
endowments. His unaccountable appearance, the nature of his
communications, together with his manner and abrupt mode of speech,
would have shaken many a firmer heart unprepared for these disclosures.

"What is thy business with me?" he inquired, with some hesitation.

"To warn thee;--to warn thy d