Begin with slight feuds; exercise daily the arms of your country in tourney with your followers." "And what leisure is there for this ?" exclaimed the young chief, starting as if something horrid had occurred to his imagination.

"How many days are there betwixt this hour and Palm Sunday, and what is to chance then?
A list inclosed, from which no man can stir, more than the poor bear who is chained to his stake.

Sixty living men, the best and fiercest--one alone excepted!--which Albyn can send down from her mountains, all athirst for each other's blood, while a king and his nobles, and shouting thousands besides, attend, as at a theatre, to encourage their demoniac fury! Blows clang and blood flows, thicker, faster, redder; they rush on each other like madmen, they tear each other like wild beasts; the wounded are trodden to death amid the feet of their companions! Blood ebbs, arms become weak; but there must be no parley, no truce, no interruption, while any of the maimed wretches remain alive! Here is no crouching behind battlements, no fighting with missile weapons: all is hand to hand, till hands can no longer be raised to maintain the ghastly conflict! If such a field is so horrible in idea, what think you it will be in reality ?" The glover remained silent.
"I say again, what think you ?" "I can only pity you, Conachar," said Simon.

"It is hard to be the descendant of a lofty line--the son of a noble father--the leader by birth of a gallant array, and yet to want, or think you want, for still I trust the fault lies much in a quick fancy, that over estimates danger--to want that dogged quality which is possessed by every game cock that is worth a handful of corn, every hound that is worth a mess of offal.

But how chanced it that, with such a consciousness of inability to fight in this battle, you proffered even now to share your chiefdom with my daughter?
Your power must depend on your fighting this combat, and in that Catharine cannot help you." "You mistake, old man," replied Eachin: "were Catharine to look kindly on the earnest love I bear her, it would carry me against the front of the enemies with the mettle of a war horse.