"Your triumph shall not go farther than the hour which is stricken.Menteith,I entreat you by our relationship--by our joint conflicts and labours--draw your sword,and defend your life!"As he spoke,he seized the Earl's hand,and wrung it with such frantic earnestness,that his grasp forced the blood to start under the nails.Menteith threw him off with violence,exclaiming,"Begone,madman!"
"Then,be the vision accomplished!"said Allan;and,drawing his dirk,struck with his whole gigantic force at the Earl's bosom.
The temper of the corslet threw the point of the weapon upwards,but a deep wound took place between the neck and shoulder;and the force of the blow prostrated the bridegroom on the floor.
Montrose entered at one side of the anteroom.The bridal company,alarmed at the noise,were in equal apprehension and surprise;but ere Montrose could almost see what had happened,Allan M'Aulay had rushed past him,and descended the castle stairs like lightning."Guards,shut the gate!"exclaimed Montrose--"Seize him--kill him,if he resists!--He shall die,if he were my brother!"
But Allan prostrated,with a second blow of his dagger,a sentinel who was upon duty---traversed the camp like a mountain-deer,though pursued by all who caught the alarm--threw himself into the river,and,swimming to the opposite side,was soon lost among the woods.In the course of the same evening,his brother Angus and his followers left Montrose's camp,and,taking the road homeward,never again rejoined him.
Of Allan himself it is said,that,in a wonderfully short space after the deed was committed,he burst into a room in the Castle of Inverary,where Argyle was sitting in council,and flung on the table his bloody dirk.
"Is it the blood of James Grahame?"said Argyle,a ghastly expression of hope mixing with the terror which the sudden apparition naturally excited.
"It is the blood of his minion,"answered M'Aulay--"It is the blood which I was predestined to shed,though I would rather have spilt my own."
Having thus spoken,he turned and left the castle,and from that moment nothing certain is known of his fate.As the boy Kenneth,with three of the Children of the Mist,were seen soon afterwards to cross Lochfine,it is supposed they dogged his course,and that he perished by their hand in some obscure wilderness.
Another opinion maintains,that Allan M'Aulay went abroad and died a monk of the Carthusian order.But nothing beyond bare presumption could ever be brought in support of either opinion.
His vengeance was much less complete than he probably fancied;
for Menteith,though so severely wounded as to remain long in a dangerous state,was,by having adopted Major Dalgetty's fortunate recommendation of a cuirass as a bridal-garment,happily secured from the worst consequences of the blow.But his services were lost to Montrose;and it was thought best,that he should be conveyed with his intended countess,now truly a mourning bride,and should accompany his wounded father-in-law to the castle of Sir Duncan at Ardenvohr.Dalgetty followed them to the water's edge,reminding Menteith of the necessity of erecting a sconce on Drumsnab to cover his lady's newly-acquired inheritance.
They performed their voyage in safety,and Menteith was in a few weeks so well in health,as to be united to Annot in the castle of her father.
The Highlanders were somewhat puzzled to reconcile Menteith's recovery with the visions of the second sight,and the more experienced Seers were displeased with him for not having died.
But others thought the credit of the vision sufficiently fulfilled,by the wound inflicted by the hand,and with the weapon,foretold;and all were of opinion,that the incident of the ring,with the death's head,related to the death of the bride's father,who did not survive her marriage many months.
The incredulous held,that all this was idle dreaming,and that Allan's supposed vision was but a consequence of the private suggestions of his own passion,which,having long seen in Menteith a rival more beloved than himself,struggled with his better nature,and impressed upon him,as it were involuntarily,the idea of killing his competitor.
