I must not kill the likeness of my foster--" This was spoken with a melancholy smile, while a tear at the same time stood in the speaker's eye.

Torquil stared at his young chief for an instant, then drew his sharp wood knife across the creature's throat with a cut so swift and steady that the weapon reached the backbone.
Then rising on his feet, and again fixing a long piercing look on his chief, he said: "As much as I have done to that hind would I do to any living man whose ears could have heard my dault (foster son) so much as name a white doe, and couple the word with Hector's name!" If Simon had no reason before to keep himself concealed, this speech of Torquil furnished him with a pressing one.
"It cannot be concealed, father Torquil," said Eachin: "it will all out to the broad day." "What will out?
what will to broad day ?" asked Torquil in surprise.
"It is the fatal secret," thought Simon; "and now, if this huge privy councillor cannot keep silence, I shall be made answerable, I suppose, for Eachin's disgrace having been blown abroad." Thinking thus anxiously, he availed himself at the same time of his position to see as much as he could of what passed between the afflicted chieftain and his confidant, impelled by that spirit of curiosity which prompts us in the most momentous, as well as the most trivial, occasions of life, and which is sometimes found to exist in company with great personal fear.
As Torquil listened to what Eachin communicated, the young man sank into his arms, and, supporting himself on his shoulder, concluded his confession by a whisper into his ear.

Torquil seemed to listen with such amazement as to make him incapable of crediting his ears.

As if to be certain that it was Eachin who spoke, he gradually roused the youth from his reclining posture, and, holding him up in some measure by a grasp on his shoulder, fixed on him an eye that seemed enlarged, and at the same time turned to stone, by the marvels he listened to.

And so wild waxed the old man's visage after he had heard the murmured communication, that Simon Glover apprehended he would cast the youth from him as a dishonoured thing, in which case he might have lighted among the very copse in which he lay concealed, and occasioned his discovery in a manner equally painful and dangerous.