"Lend me your dirk, Stuart. I left mine at the wine caza," said Alister, adjusting his belt and putting his basket-hilt free of plaid, sash, tassels, &c. "It is as well to be prepared for any sudden attack, and the baroness must be my warrant that I am not made a prisoner of by some of Gazan's scouts or sharp-shooters. So then, good-by, Stuart; I will come brattling up the brae in an hour or so."
The lady kissed her hand to Stuart and departed with Macdonald, feeling a confidence and assurance of safety which probably no British lady would have felt, if entrusted to the charge of a foreigner under the same peculiar circumstances.
"And this is Diane de Montmichel, the false love of poor Victor d'Estouville," thought Ronald, as her light figure disappeared in the darkness. "Well, I believe, if all the tales his friend De Mesmai told me were true, one cannot look for much faith in French women!"
For Macdonald's return he waited with considerable anxiety, which increased when the time by which he expected him passed away without his appearing, and day began to dawn on the Maya heights. He could not help dreading that Alister had not been wary enough, and had been captured by the French advanced sentinels. If so, the escape of the baroness would come to light, and he feared the Marquess of Wellington would make a deuced unpleasant row about it. He also remembered Narvaez Cifuentes, whom for some time he had forgotten, and supposed that his friend might have fatally encountered this savage bandit and some of his companions.
The morning had now dawned, but the valleys between Elizondo and the rock of Maya, and even the summits of the Lower Pyrenees, were still almost involved in darkness. Shaking the dew from their booming wings, the eagles were soaring through the blue sky from their eyries among the cliffs, and the morning breeze, as it swept along the mountain sides, bore with it the delightful perfume of the aromatic plants and little shrubs which flourish so plentifully in all waste places throughout Spain. From the dying embers of the picquet-fire a puff of smoke curled now and then on the pure air, but scarcely a sound woke the echoes of the place, save the proud and steady tread of the sentries as they strode to and fro on their posts.
Beyond the advanced chain of the latter, Ronald wandered far in search of Macdonald, and to await his return seated himself upon a fragment of rock, and watched attentively the long valley which lay between him and the Lower or French Pyrenees, varying this employment, by holloaing to the eagles as he used to do at home, or by hurling stones at the glossy black ravens as they screamed aloud, flapped their wings, and from the rocks of the surrounding wilderness stared at him as an intruder upon their solitude. The voice of some one singing a Gaelic song,—
"Cha teid mis a chaoidh,"[*]
caused him to spring to his feet.
[*] I will never go with him.
"Holloa, Alister! Is that you, my man?"