"Defend yourself, then, traitor though you be!" said Huske, drawing a pistol from his girdle and cocking it.
"I am no traitor," retorted MacGregor, proudly, "for I never owned as king the German prince you serve, but am the liegeman of James VIII., whose enemies may God confound! Moreover, I have no wish to encounter you again, Major Huske—at least, until this child, which has been long my peculiar care, is in a place of safety." As he spoke he pointed to a boy, who was no other than little Harry, the child taken at Inversnaid, and who was sound asleep on the soft heather, with Rob's tartan plaid wrapped round him.
"Right," said Huske, hoarsely; "my time for retribution has come; this child shall go before the Highland dog his father!"
Levelling his pistol in an instant, and before MacGregor could interpose, the major shot the sleeping child through the body. There was a convulsive gasp, a shudder under the tartan plaid, and all was over! "Unfortunate wretch—oh, mistaken coward!" exclaimed Rob Roy, in a piercing voice. "Major Huske, by Heaven and St. Mary, you have destroyed your own son!"
"How—how?" cried Huske, wildly; for the solemn and excited manner of MacGregor impressed him with a terrible conviction of truth; "my son, say you—my son?"
"I have spoken but too truly," said the Highlander, while, heedless of what Huske might do with sword or pistol, he knelt, with a sob in his throat, and unfolding the bloody plaid, showed to the horror-stricken officer the dead body of a little golden-haired boy, whose features he could not fail to recognize.
He covered his face with his hands, exclaiming—
"Oh, MacGregor, what dreadful deed is this I have done?"
There was a long pause, and then Rob said—
"My people found your son asleep in his little bed at Inversnaid, and carefully preserved him until such time as he could be restored to you, his father, or friends. Hunted and proscribed as we are, treated by such as you like wolves or other wild beasts, a hundred difficulties were in the way of having the child thus restored; and the poor little fellow learned to love us, to be the playmate of my children, the sharer of our humble hearth and frugal board, while my good and gentle wife, who knew that the boy was motherless, nurtured him tenderly. Being certain that you would be with the army sent against Seaforth and the Spaniards, I brought hither the child that we might restore him, in the hope that for the good deed we had done you might allow, as we say in Scotland, bygones between us to be bygones; but, alas! this is the restoration that Helen's heart foreboded!"