"How, Macgregor?"
"When she predicted so often that the child was too sweet in temper and too fair in form to find a place on earth; and now, woe worth the hour! he has been sent by his father's hand to Heaven, from whence he came!"
When MacGregor ceased, Huske had cast himself on his knees among the heather, cowering down, in wretchedness, with his face buried in his hands, and sobbing heavily; while the former covered up the little body, tenderly and gently, in his plaid, lest the sight of its blood should too much shock the murderer.
"Go, Major Huske,—return to your men," said he, laying a hand kindly on the shoulder of the officer; "my hand can never inflict on you a deeper wound than your own has done. From my soul I pity you! When seeking to wrong me—wrong me cruelly and foully—you have destroyed your fair little boy, whom I was learning to love as if he had been my own; but," added Rob, taking off his bonnet and pointing upward, "his pure spirit is among the flowers that the angels will gather at the foot of His throne who is above us."
"Oh, MacGregor," groaned Huske, "end, I pray you, my existence!"
"That I may not do; and I pray you to avoid me when next we meet."
"Where?" asked Huske, incoherently.
"Where the angel of death is hovering—on the hills of Glensheil," replied Rob Roy, as he sprang up some rocks that were close by and disappeared; for at that moment an officer named Captain Dawnes, who had heard the explosion of the pistol, came hurriedly up with some twenty men of the picket, all with their bayonets fixed.