"The minister—bah!"
"You never feared death, Ballychroan?"
"Death—no! for he has everywhere eluded me. You have seen me rush into the breach amid a thousand dangers, and escape them all. I have flung myself upon the levelled bayonets, and among the uplifted swords of the enemy; but the bayonets became pointless, the swords blunted, the bullets harmless as snow-flakes! In the dark vault of the Vizie, the flames spared me; even the ocean itself repelled me, when three hundred brave men went down into its greedy gulf; and, like he who wanders for ever—he who mocked his Saviour on the ascent to Calvary—I seem to bear a charmed life; but yet, like that more happy wretch, I cannot live for ever. No, Hamish, no—my days are numbered!"
"Go not forth to-day," reiterated the old soldier, grasping the arm of the excited captain.
"Bah!" he responded, and drained another glass of whiskey.
"What did Kenneth Ower foretel two hundred years ago?"
"That when a black Yule overtook a black Laird of Ballychroan, the race would cease."
"Well—you are the first of your family who have the name of Evan Dhu—and you have no son."
"Thank Heaven, no! I care not for predictions, and Kenneth Ower Mackenzie, the Brahn prophet, was a fool."
"He foretold strange things though."