The wounded hind thou track'st not now,
Pursuest not maid through greenwood bough,
Nor pliest thou now thy flying pace
With rivals in the mountain race;
But danger, death, and warrior deed
Are in thy course,-speed, Malise, speed!
Fast as the fatal symbol flies,

In arms the huts and hamlets rise;
From winding glen, from upland brown,
They poured each hardy tenant down.
Nor slack'd the messenger his pace:
He show'd the sign, he named the place,
And, pressing forward like the wind,
Left clamour and surprise behind.
The fisherman forsook the strand,
The swarthy smith took dirk and brand"
With changed cheer, the mower blithe
Left in the half-cut swathe the scythe ;
The herds without a keeper stray'd,
The plough was in mid-furrow stay'd,
The falconer toss'd his hawk away,
The hunter left the stag at bay;
Prompt at the signal of alarms,
Each son of Alpine rush'd to arms;
So swept the tumult and affray
Along the margin of Achray."
Alas, thou lovely lake! that e'er

Thy banks should echo sounds of fear!
The rocks, the bosky thickets, sleep

9

So stilly on thy bosom deep;

The lark's blithe carol, from the cloud,
Seem for the scene too gaily loud.

Speed, Malise, speed !-The lake is past,
Duncraggan's huts appear at last,

And peep, like mossgrown rocks, half seen
Half hidden in the copse so green;
There may'st thou rest, thy labour done,
Their lord shall speed the signal on.
As stoops the hawk upon his prey,
The henchman shot him down the way.
-What woful accents load the gale?
The funeral yell, the female wail !
A gallant hunter's sport is o'er,
A valiant warrior fights no more,

2

Who, in the battle or the chase,
At Roderick's side shall fill his place!
Within the hall, where torch's ray
Supplies the excluded beams of day,
Lies Duncan on his lowly bier,

And o'er him streams his widow's tear.
His stripling son stands mournful by,
His youngest weeps, but knows not why;
The village maids and matrons round
The dismal coronach 10 resound.

See Stumah, who, the bier beside,
His master's corpse with wonder eyed ;
Poor Stumah! whom his least halloo
Could send like lightning o'er the dew,-
Bristles his crest, and points his ears,
As if some stranger step he hears.
'Tis not a mourner's muffled tread,
Who comes to sorrow o'er the dead,
But headlong haste, or deadly fear,
Urge the precipitate " career.
All stand aghast :-unheeding all,
The henchman bursts into the hall;
Before the dead man's bier he stood;

Held forth the cross besmear'd with blood-
“The muster-place is Lanrick mead—
Speed forth the signal! clansmen, speed!"
Angus, the heir of Duncan's line,
Sprang forth and seized the fatal sign ;
In haste the stripling to his side
His father's dirk and broadsword tied ;
But when he saw his mother's eye
Watch him in speechless agony,
Back to her open'd arms he flew,
Press'd on her lips a fond adieu.

"Alas!" she sobb'd,-" and yet, be gone, And speed thee forth, like Duncan's son !” One look he cast upon the bier,

Dash'd from his eye the gathering tear,

Breathed deep to clear his labouring breast,
And toss'd aloft his bonnet crest;

Then like the high-bred colt, when, freed,
First he essays his fire and speed,
He vanish'd, and o'er moor and moss
Sped forward with the fiery cross.

Suspended was the widow's tear,
While yet his footsteps she could hear;
And when she mark'd the henchman's eye,
Wet with unwonted sympathy,

Kinsman," she said, "his race is run
That should have sped thine errand on;
The oak has fall'n,-the sapling bough
Is all Duncraggan's shelter now.
Yet trust I well, his duty done,
The orphan's God will guard my son."

The symbol.-The yew-cross, the signal for war.

Crosslet.-A little cross; "let" means little, as streamlet, a little stream. 3 Silver beach.-So called from its white sand.

⚫ Blood and brand.-Fire and sword. "Questing hound.-One in search of

game.

* The scar.-A deep crack or cleft.

Dirk and brand. - Dagger and sword. A sword is called a brand because it shines like a brand, or burning piece of wood.

8

Achray. A beautiful lake near Loch
Katrine.

9

Bosky thickets.-Woody thickets.
10 Coronach.-Funeral wail.
"Precipitate career. Headlong

course.

GILBERT AINSLIE.

[Abridged from a tale entitled Moss-side, by PROFESSOR WILSON. The narrative is remarkable for its simplicity of style and diction. It illustrates a leading rule in English composition: Language being the dress in which ideas are clothed, care should be taken that the style of dress is suitable to the persons introduced as speaking and to the nature of the subject treated of.]

GILBERT AINSLIE was a poor man; and he had been a poor man all the days of his life, which were not few, for his thin hair was now waxing grey. He had been born and bred on the small moorland farm which he now occupied ; and he hoped to die there, as his father and grandfather had done before him, leaving a family just above the more bitter wants of this world. Labour, hard and unremitting, had been his lot in life; but although sometimes severely tried, he had never repined. With his own hands he had ploughed, sowed and reaped his scanty harvest, assisted, as they grew up, by his sons, who, even in boyhood, were happy to work along with their father in the field.

There is no need to tell the character of the wife of such

a man.

Meek and thoughtful, yet gladsome and gay withal, her heaven was in her house; and her gentler and weaker hands helped to bar the door against want. Ten children. had been born to them; they had lost three, and their youngest, a girl about nine years of age, had been lying for a week in a fever.

some

It was now Saturday evening, and the ninth day of the disease. "Do you think the child is dying?" said Gilbert with a calm voice to the surgeon, who, on his wearied horse, had just arrived from another sick-bed, over the misty range of hills, and had been looking steadfastly for minutes on the little patient. The humane man knew the family well in the midst of whom he was standing, and replied, "While there is life there is hope; but my pretty little Margaret is, I fear, in the last extremity."

There was no loud lamentation at these words-all had before known, though they would not confess it to themselves, what they now were told—but the certainty that was in the words of the skilful man made their hearts beat for a little with quicker throbbings, made their pale faces paler, and brought out from their eyes a greater gush of tears. There were wandering and wavering and dreamy delirious phantasies in the brain of the innocent child; but the few words she indistinctly uttered were affecting, not rending to the heart, for it was plain that she thought herself herding her sheep in the green silent pastures, and sitting wrapped in her plaid upon the lone and sunny side of the hill above her cottage-home. She was too much exhausted to frame a tune; but some of her words seemed to be from favourite old songs; and at last her mother wept, and turned aside her face, when the child, whose blue eyes were shut and her lips almost still, breathed out these lines of the beautiful twenty-third psalm:

"The Lord's my Shepherd, I'll not want;

He makes me down to lię

In pastures green; he leadeth me
The quiet waters by."

The child was now left with none but her mother by the bedside, for it was said to be best so; and Gilbert and his family sat down round the kitchen fire for a while in silence. In about a quarter of an hour they began to rise calmly, and to go each to his allotted work. One of the daughters went forth with the pail to milk the cow, and another began to set out the table in the middle of the floor for supper, covering it with a white cloth. Gilbert viewed the usual household arrangements with a solemn and untroubled eye; and there was almost the faint light of a grateful smile on his cheek, as he said to the worthy surgeon, "You will partake of our fare after your day's travel and toil of humanity." In a short silent half-hour the potatoes and oat-cake, butter and milk, were on the board; and Gilbert, lifting up his toil-hardened hand as a signal for silence, closed his eyes in reverence, and asked a blessing. There was a little stool, on which no one sat, by the old man's side. It had been put there unwittingly,2 when the other seats were all placed in their usual order; but the golden head that was wont to rise at that part of the table was now wanting.

Another hour of trial passed, and the child was still stemming the stream for its life. The very dogs knew there was grief in the house, and lay without stirring, as if hiding themselves, below the long table at the window. One sister sat with an unfinished frock on her knees, that she had been sewing for the sick child, and still continued at the hopeless work, she scarcely knew why. "What is that?" said the old man to his eldest daughter; "what is that you are laying on the shelf?" She could scarcely reply that it was a ribbon and an ivory comb that she had bought for little Margaret against the night of the schoolparty. "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away," said the old man to himself; "blessed be the name of the Lord."