That e’er shall hide the houseless head.
* * * * *
Burst be the ear that fails to heed!
Palsied the foot that shuns to speed!
May ravens tear the careless eyes,
Wolves make the coward heart their prize.”
Roderick’s servant, Malise, seizing the cross, starts off through the Trossachs, and along Loch Achray to Duncraggan, where he hands the symbol on to “Angus, heir of Duncan’s line,” who carries it along Vennachar and up to the pass of Leny, passing it on to a bridegroom on Loch Lubnaig, and so it follows round all the haunts of the clan.
Ellen and her father meantime retreat to a cave on Ben Venue. Here she accidentally meets again the fascinating stranger, who tries to persuade her to elope with him; but she tells him of her love for young Malcolm, and he honourably refrains from pressing his suit; instead he gives her a ring which, he says, was given him by the King, with a promise that on its production the King would fulfil any request of the wearer. Meantime he is being watched by Roderick Dhu as a spy, and Roderick sends a so-called guide to conduct him out of the labyrinth; but the guide is one of the clan Murdoch, who has secret orders to kill the stranger so soon as he gets him alone. The seer has proclaimed that whichever side first kills one of the other will win in the trial of strength now about to begin, and when Roderick hears this he rejoices to think that by treachery the lot will fall to him.
Fitz-James, however, is warned by a half-witted woman wandering in the wood, and when he discloses his suspicions he is shot at by Murdoch, who, however, misses him and kills the woman instead. Fitz-James, furious at this barbarity, promptly kills him, and, cutting off a tress of the dying woman’s hair, swears to kill the chief, Roderick Dhu, the author of this foul deed, whenever he shall meet him. He wanders on in the wilderness of trees and rocks, and, as night is coming on, he loses himself.
Famished and chilled, through ways unknown,