The stranger answered in a voice of thunder—
"Thy daughter!"
Tyrone, for it was he, seemed nigh choking with the emotion he sought to suppress.
"Nay," he continued, "it must not be. Oh! did I love her less, she had been mine!"
"Thine?" suddenly retorted her father, somewhat scornfully. "And who gave thee this power over woman's spirit? Thou hast not even had speech of her, much less the means to win her favour."
An almost supernatural expression seemed to gather on the features of the chieftain. His eye, rolling through the vista of past years, began to pause, appalled as it approached the dark threshold of the future. He appeared lost to the presence of
surrounding objects, as he thus exclaimed with a terrific solemnity—
"When the dark-browed Norah nursed me on her lap, and her eye, though dark to outward sense, saw through the dim veil of destiny, it was thus she sung as she guarded my slumbers, and the hated Sassenach was in the hall:—
"'Rest thee, baby! light and darkness
Mingling o'er thy path shall play;
Hope shall flee when thou pursuest,
Lost amid life's trackless way.
"'Rest thee, baby! woman's breast
Thou shalt darken o'er with woe;
None thou lookest on or lovest,
Joy or hope hereafter know.
Many a maid thy glance shall rue,
Where it smites it shall subdue.'