truly told her she gazed upon her husband!

CHAPTER XIV.

A brief pause followed the entrance of this unexpected visitor. Standing
upon the threshold, his dark brow knit, his eyes fixed on his prisoners,
the Earl of Buchan stood a few minutes immovable. Alan saw but a
mail-clad warrior, more fierce and brutal in appearance than the
generality of their foes, and felt, with all that heart-sinking
despondency natural to youth, that they were betrayed, that resistance
was in vain, for heavier and louder grew the tramp of horse and man, and
the narrow passage, discernible through the open door, was filled with
steel-clad forms, their drawn swords glancing in the torchlight, their
dark brows gleaming in ill-concealed triumph. Alan was still a boy in
years, despite his experience as a warrior, and in the first agony of
this discovery, the first dream of chains and captivity, when his young
spirit revelled in the thought of freedom, and joyed as a bird in the
fresh air of mount and stream, weaving bright hopes, not exile or
wandering could remove, his impulse had been to dash his useless sword
in anguish to the earth, and weep; but the sight of his mother checked
that internal weakness. He felt her convulsive clasp; he beheld the
expression on her features,--how unlike their wont--terror, suffering,
whose _entire_ cause he vainly endeavored to define, and he roused
himself for her. And she, did she see more than her son? She _knew_ that
face, and as she gazed, she felt hope had departed; she beheld naught
but a long, endless vista of anguish; yet she felt not for herself, she
thought but of her child. And the earl, can we define his exulting
mood?--it was the malice, the triumph of a fiend.

"Who and what art thou?" demanded Alan, fiercely, laying his right hand
on his sword, and with the left firmly clasping his mother's waist.
"What bold knight and honorable chevalier art thou, thus seeking by
stealth the retreat of a wanderer, and overpowering by numbers and
treachery men, who on the field thou and such as thou had never dared to
meet?"

The earl laughed; that bitter, biting laugh of contempt and triumph so
difficult to bear.

"Thou hast a worthy tongue, my pretty springald," said he; "canst thou
use thy sword as bravely? Who and what am I? ask of the lady thou hast
so caressingly encircled with thine arm, perchance she can give thee
information."

Alan started, a cold thrill passed through his frame, as the