"Chut! then some other brave fellow will surely live to do so. There is Munro of Culcraigie, or Mackenzie of Kildon, or our kinsman, Phadrig Mhor, for we cannot all be knocked on the head. My poor Moina!"
"Take care you do not forget her among the blue-eyed Danish damsels."
"Forget!" reiterated Ian, with honest warmth; "I swore by the great Chief of the universe, and by our fathers' graves in Iona, to be faithful and true to Moina, and, as we dipped our hands together in St. Chuimin's well, she pledged the same to me. Nay, nay, Philip, judge me not, as you would by a rake-helly student of the King's college."
Ian kissed the brooch, which is the dearest gift of a Highland love; for, among the mountains, the bridegroom gives his bride, not a ring, but a brooch, engraved with some heraldic device, or affectionate inscription, and as the same gift served for many generations, those love-tokens became priceless reliques of remembrance, by their hallowed and enduring associations, and such was the brooch of Moina. It had been her mother's, and Ian was to wear it until he returned to espouse her in Kill Chuimm.
"And why did you leave her, Ian?"
"Eighteen months ago—fully six months before I was so happy as to know and to love her, at a great hunting match on the braes of Lochaber, I unfortunately pledged my word to Sir Donald that I would go with him to Germany. Like a generous gentleman, he offered to release me from my promise; but a hundred of my people expected that I was to lead them, and I alone; thus it would ill become M'Farquhar to keep his sword in the scabbard when he had pledged his word to unsheath it. I could have made Moina mine before I left the hills of our race; for a missionary priest, who acts as chaplain to her family, Sheumas Stiubhart, or James of Jerusalem, as the Lowlanders call him, offered to unite us secretly at Kill Chuimm; but I would not run the risk of leaving Moina a wedded mourner, a widowed bride, like the dames of Fingal's warriors, who spent half their time sitting upon the seashore, with hair unbound and harp in hand, looking towards the ocean for the return of their absent spouses. Thus, if in three years and three days I come not again, I will hold Moina free to be wooed and free to won by another."
Ian's voice quavered, though he endeavoured to assume an air of bravado, but I saw through the sickly effort.
"From your gay manner yesterday, Ian, I deemed you happiest of the happy; but, doubtless, every heart has some inward sorrow which the eye sees not."
"True, true, the loudest laugh does not always come from the lightest heart."
"Thank God!" said I, observing how his dark eye glistened, "that I have no regret of this kind to render yet more sad this day of parting with my home."