The knight paused, and looked with animation upon her. "Then your father is in arms, and against the tyrant! Tell me where, and you see before you a man who is ready to join him, and to lay down his life in the just cause!"
At this vehement declaration, Lady Helen's full heart overflowed, and she burst into tears. He drew toward her, and in a moderated voice continued: "My men, though few, are brave. They are devoted to their country, and are willing for her sake to follow me to victory or to death. As I am a knight, I am sworn to defend the cause of right; and where shall I so justly find it, as on the side of bleeding, wasted Scotland? How shall I so well pursue my career as in the defense of her injured sons? Speak, gentle lady! trust me with your noble father's name, and he shall not have cause to blame the confidence you repose in a true though wandering Scot!"
"My father," replied Helen, weeping afresh, "is not where your generous services can reach him. Two brave chiefs, one a kinsman of my own, and the other his friend, are now colleagued to free him. If they fail, my whole house falls in blood! and to add another victim to the destiny which in that case will overwhelm me—the thought is beyond my strength." Faint with agitation, and the horrible images which reawakened her direst fears, she stopped; and then added in a suppressed voice, "Farewell!"
"Not till you hear me further," replied he. "I repeat I have now a scanty number of followers; but I leave these mountains to gather more. Tell me, then, where I may join these chiefs you speak of. Give me a pledge that I come from you; and whoever may be your father, as he is a true Scot, I will compass his release, or perish in the attempt."
"Alas! generous stranger," cried she, "to what would you persuade me?
You know not the peril that you seek!"
"Nothing is perilous to me," replied he, with an heroic smile, "that is to serve my country. I have no interest, no joy but in her. Give me, then, the only happiness of which I am now capable, and send me to serve her, by freeing one of her defenders!"
Helen hesitated. The tumult of her mind dried her tears. She looked up, with all these inward agitations painted on her cheeks. His beaming eyes were full of patriotic ardor; and his fine countenance, composed into a heavenly calmness by the sublime sentiments which occupied his soul, made him appear to her not a as man, but as an angel from the armed host of heaven.
"Fear not, lady," said the hermit, "that you would plunge your deliverer into any extraordinary danger by involving him in what you might call rebellion against the usurper. He is already a proscribed man."
"Proscribed!" repeated she; "wretched indeed is my country when her noblest spirits are denied the right to live!-when every step they take to regain what has been torn from them, only involves them in deeper ruin!"
"No country is wretched, sweet lady," returned the knight, "till, by a dastardly acquiescence, it consents to its own slavery. Bonds, and death, are the utmost of our enemy's malice; the one is beyond his power to inflict, when a man is determined to die or to live free; and for the other, which of us will think that ruin, which leads to the blessed freedom of paradise?"