"Sir knight," said the old woman, "think not hardly of my highdescended lady--my darling foster child, though, to conceal your retreat, she assists in offices of mercy. Your figure and garb agree with the far-circulated descriptions of a warrior, whose ill-timed interference prevented a happy conclusion to the troubles of Scotland. Were it known you are here, not all the entreaties of the Lady Dervongilda, of Galloway and Kilsyth, could save you from the vengeance of her guardian uncle." The knight responded in words of burning gratitude and admiration : the lovely Dervongilda bowed and smiled acknowledgment; but no articulate sound breathed from her compressed lips. "Is this peerless beauty denied the interchanges of thought in speech?" said Allan. "Be it so. The eloquence of her charms can speak to the heart." multitudes applied for the relief of conscientious scruplés. Probably the council of war had been held in Alloway tower, since Allan was obliged to pass from thence through a wood to seek the advice of the holy casuists; and near the verge, by the light of the moon, he observed a boy resolutely defending himself against two assailants in manhood. Allan rushed upon the dastards, and cut them to the earth with a few strokes of his unfailing sword. Several horsemen now rode up in great consternation, and were so occupied in binding up a wound of the valiant boy, that his deliverer was allowed to pass away unheeded. He had received several stabs in his arm, his thigh, and reins; but the most severe was a gash in his thigh from a two-edged short sword. He tied his scarf over it, a mist came on his eyes, and he could not proceed to the religious house. When a little recovered, the moon was set, and he mistook his way among the trees. Another track led to a spacious garden: his strength "Sir and spirits were sinking under ex-knight, though humanity to a brave haustion; he leaned against a gate; warrior has so far overcome maidenit yielded to the pressure; he stag-ly reserve in my young lady, as to gered almost unsconsciously to a aid her nurse in using means to save bower, and fainted near the entrance. him from certain death, she can hold -Recovered from insensibility, he with him no verbal communication; found himself in a cottage; an old nor will she listen to soft flatteries woman pouring unguents upon his from an unknown." wounds; while, benignant and beautiful as a seraph, a young female supported his head, and chafed his temples with fragrant waters. She was intently contemplating his fine features when he opened his eyes, and, as their piercing glances met hers, she dropped her long silken eyelashes; crimson blushes taking place of the lily on her fair forehead, neck, || acquiescence. and arms. The hoary dame interrupted these impassioned phrases, saying, The old woman hoped thus to learn the name and condition of her guest; but Allan had weighty reasons for withholding the information, and he simply replied, "If in the utterance of thanks for the most important benefits I have been too bold, I crave pardon." Dervongilda again bowed in mute One quarter of a moon rolled away the castle; and after some time, in ceaseless assiduities to the un-of steel was loud in the direction of known; and then the, gentle lady seldom appeared with her nurse, and her face wore heavy clouds of anxiety and sorrow. In the absence of Dervongilda, the aged dame informed Allan, that the Lord Kilsyth had come to a neighbouring castle, recently granted to him by the king. The Lord of Wigton was also arrived there. The attachment of Wigton to his liege lord was evidently wavering; and to fix him, the broken-hearted Dervongilda must be sacrificed to his aged arms. Had she been of manly sex, the honours and wide-extending lands of her father, the Lord of Galloway, would have owned her their lord; but as a female, she was dependent on her stern uncle. 1 "But I must, I will save her from this last, this worst evil," said the old woman in accents of vehemence; and, rushing from the chamber, left Allan the prey of corroding solicitude and conjecture. "Why did she not unfold her purpose?" said the chief to himself. "Though this frame is wounded and wasted, I could try to wield a sword in the behalf of Dervongilda." Such reflections banished sleep, and about midnight the clattering hoofs of war-horses in the court of the castle, the din of iron-shod and hooted combatants hurrying to and fro, and the slogan of fierce onset, enkindled a bright flame of valour in the breast of Allan. He made a desperate exertion against the pain and weakness of his limbs, and rose from his restless couch; but was soon thrown into transports of rage, on finding that his garments and arms had been removed, and his chamber fastened on the outside. The clash "I must previously be assured of Dervongilda's fate," said Allan, 197 "She is lodged with all the deference due to her rank and virtues; she is unmolested and secure under our protection," answered the youth. "You shall meet by the dawning morn." Arrived at the camp, Allan soda learnt the high name of the valorous boy he had rescued. Two partizans of the favourites, who misled the royal James, under pretence of guiding the Duke of Rothsay to the iconfessional, seized the opportunity to earn a large bribe from a band of conspirators, who either dreaded the resentment of the heir apparent, on account of past offences, or foresaw that his energetic mind would not be the dupe of their artifices, like his too easy father. They persuaded the king to issue a mandate, promising a vast recompence for bringing the young prince to his presence, and thus to terminate the woeful dissensions of Scotia. The conspirators assured their agents of the bribe, though, to prevent his escape, they should be under, the necessity of taking the prince's life. His brave resistance provoked the assailants to murderous extremities. The Duke of Rothsay called his most skilful leeches to prescribe for Allan, whose mental agitation re-brethren preserve the attestations tarded the cure of his wounds. The of my birth in their archives of leeches unanimously pronounced, that truth." some hidden malady undermined his youthful vigour. The duke recollected his anxious solicitude for Dervongilda's safety, and spoke of her to the pale languid chief. His heightened colour, eager eye, and tremulous voice in response, confirmed the duke's suspicion, that for her sake his deliverer pined in secret. lo "Her uncle is slain," said he, "and hers shall be the titles and lands of Kilsyth but is not her own loveliness a far richer dower? Tell me, brave knight, have ever you beheld a fairer than the lily of Kilsyth?" The lady of Kilsyth saved me from death," said Allan, evading a direct reply," I would see her, to express my gratitude ere I die." " The Duke of Rothsay led Dervongilda near the couch of Allan. Mistaking the amorous despondency of the hero for mortal symptoms, tears and sobs betrayed the inmost emotions of her artless soul. "Sir knight, my brave deliverer," said the Duke of Rothsay, "wealth and titles hast thou earned in blood; but a high lineage is only the boon of heaven. Say, art thou far descended?" "I am the only offspring of Jan, by his people, the Clan na Geallana, called the broad-chested lion, a name he acquired when his sword (the sword I have never drawn in vain) reaped renown in the wars of Iberia against the infidels. Gormhuilla, daughter to the chief of the great Clan Oduine, bore me, in the abbey of Oronsay, and there concealed me from the death-stealing grasp of a false uncle. The abbot and the holy VolTV No. XX. By the command of the Duke of Rothsay, Allan related the story of his mother's captivity and marriage; of his father's death; and his own adventures in foreign lands, and since his return to Scotland. The vivid and profound sympathy of Dervon gilda sparkled in her radiant eyes, or blanched the roses on her cheeks. The duke summoned his trusty counsellors, and the lady heiress of Kil syth was betrothed to the chief of Clan na Geallana. Her attendance on his couch embalmed every wound; and he was soon in a condition to accelerate the nuptials with due pomp and festivity. The joyful day was not declined to evening, when a sudden attack from the favourites of James III. called to arms. Allan rushed to arms with a high com2 mand as spouse to the heiress of Kilsyth, and in his own persona chief and a knight of fame. At tended by his faithful nurse, her maiden foster-sisters, and many dames and virgins of her lands, Dervongilda looked fearfully from the battlements of her castle, agitated by hope, or trembling with alarm, as in the fight she caught transient glimpses of the waving plumes and nodding fern that distinguished her warrior. The battle is won; Allan returns victorious and unhurt. Overpowered by excess of joy, the lily of Kilsyth bends her head on his bosom. Tears of rapture dimmed the eyes of the hero as she revived from the swoon of delight. Her white hands unclasped his helmet, and severed the rivets of his armour, rejecting all service from the attendants, until she handed to L them the garb of war to hang on the || can my single arm uproot the usurpwalls, as emblems of peace and se-er and his numerous ravagers assemcurity to Scotia; yet ever ready at bled from every coast." : bet the call of her young triumphant king. The following summer James IV. said to the chief of Clan na Geallana, "Allan, my best knight, yearns not your soul to shew Dervongilda the land of your fathers, and to give your castle of Dowart a star of the south?" "My liege," replied the warrior, "to regain the land of my fathers, and to behold my star of the south in my castle of Dowart, I would peril a thousand lives, if so many lives were mine: but to embroil the men of Kilsyth with my own clan would plunge my Dervongilda in grief; nor 1 "They are uprooted, blasted, and hewn to pieces," said the king. "The sons of the usurper were pirate scourges of the seas. Our ships and our warriors have slain or banished all their adherents. Take Dervongilda to Dowart. Let your clan behold how an angel loves a hero; and let you, and your posterity for ever, bear the lion in your name. Return to us speedily, to stand the counsellor of wisdom in war or peace, and the guard of the Scottish lion. The posterity of Allan have since been styled Mac Lean, or Sons of the Lion. B. G. (From " Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery." By Miss MITFORD.) "ABOUT four years ago, passing a few days with the highly educated daughters of some friends in this neighbourhood, I found domesticated in the family a young lady, whom I shall call as they called her, cousin Mary. She was about eighteen, not beautiful perhaps, but lovely certainly to the fullest extent of that loveliest word: as fresh as a rose; as fair as a lily; with lips like winter berries, dimpled, smiling lips; and eyes of which nobody could tell the colour, they danced so incessantly in their own gay light. Her figure was tall, round, and slender; exquisitely proportioned it must have been, for, in all attitudes in her innocent gaiety, she was scarcely ever two minutes in the same she was grace itself. She was, in short, the very picture of youth, health, and happiness. No one could see her without being prepossessed in her favour. I took a fancy to her the moment she entered the room; and it increased every hour, in spite of, or rather perhaps for, certain deficiencies which caused poor cousin Mary to be held exceedingly cheap by her accomplished relatives. She was the youngest daughter of an officer of rank dead long ago; and his sickly widow having lost by death, or that other death, marriage, all her children but this, could not, from very fondness, resolve to part with her darling for the purpose of acquiring the commonest instruction. She talked of it indeed now and then, but she only talked; so that in this age of universal education, Mary C. at the age of eighteen, exhibited the extraordinary phenome non of a young woman of high fa- old point-lace. That was her only mily, whose acquirements were li- accomplishment, and a rare artist mited to reading, writing, needle- she was: muslin and net were her work, and the first rules of arithme- canvas. She had no French either, tici The effects of this let-alone not a word; no Italian; but then system, combined with a careful se- her English was racy, unhackneyed, clusion from all improper society, proper to the thought to a degree and a perfect liberty in her country that only original thinking could give. -rambles, acting upon a mind of great She had not much reading, except power and activity, was the very re- of the Bible and Shakspeare, and verse of what might have been pre- Richardson's novels, in which she dicted. It had produced not merely was learned; but then her powers of a delightful freshness and originality observation were sharpened and of manner and character, a piquant quickened in a very unusual degree, ignorance of those things of which by the leisure and opportunity afone is tired to death, but knowledge, forded for their development at a positive, accurate, and various know- time of life when they are most ledge. She was, to be sure, wholly acute. She had nothing to distract unaccomplished; knew nothing of her mind. Her attention was always quadrilles, though her every motion awake and alive. She was an excelwas dancing; nor a note of music, lent and curious naturalist, merely though she used to warble like a bird because she had gone into the fields sweet snatches of old songs, as she with her eyes open; and knew all skipped up and down the house; the details of rural management, donor of painting, except as her taste mestic or agricultural, as well as the had been formed by a minute ac- peculiar habits and modes of thinkquaintance with nature into an in- ing of the peasantry, simply because Itense feeling of art. She had that real she had lived in the country, and extra sense, an eye for colour too, as made use of her ears. Then she well as an ear for music. Not one in was fanciful, recollective, new; drew twenty, not one in a hundred of our her images from the real objects, not sketching and copying ladies could from their shadows in books. In love and appreciate a picture where short, to listen to her and the young there was colour and mind, a picture ladies her companions, who, accomby Claude, or by our English Claudes, plished to the height,had trodden the Wilson and Hoffland, as she could; education-mill till they all moved in for she loved landscape best, because one step, had lost sense in sound she understood it best: it was a por- and ideas in words, was enough to trait of which she knew the original. make us turn masters and goverThen her needle was in her hand al- nesses out of doors, and leave our most a pencil. I never knew such daughters and grand-daughters to an embroidress; she would sit "print- Mrs. C.'s system of non-instruction. -ing her thoughts on lawn," till the I should have liked to meet with delicate creation vied with the snowy another specimen, just to ascertain tracery, the richness of Gothic ar- whether the peculiar charm and adchitecture, or of that which so much vantage arose from the quick and resembles it, the luxuriant fancy of active mind of this fair ignorant, or |