Bread and water?
out upon him! It was enough, Murdoch, to destroy the credit of the Marquis's dungeon.

But I see you would converse with my friend, Ranald MacEagh here.

Never mind my presence; I'll get me into this corner with the basket, and I will warrant my jaws make noise enough to prevent my ears from hearing you." Notwithstanding this promise, however, the veteran listened with all the attention he could to gather their discourse, or, as he described it himself, "laid his ears back in his neck, like Gustavus, when he heard the key turn in the girnell-kist." He could, therefore, owing to the narrowness of the dungeon, easily overhear the following dialogue.
"Are you aware, Son of the Mist," said the Campbell, "that you will never leave this place excepting for the gibbet ?" "Those who are dearest to me," answered MacEagh, "have trode that path before me." "Then you would do nothing," asked the visitor, "to shun following them ?" The prisoner writhed himself in his chains before returning an answer.
"I would do much," at length he said; "not for my own life, but for the sake of the pledge in the glen of Strath-Aven." "And what would you do to turn away the bitterness of the hour ?" again demanded Murdoch; "I care not for what cause ye mean to shun it." "I would do what a man might do, and still call himself a man." "Do you call yourself a man," said the interrogator, "who have done the deeds of a wolf ?" "I do," answered the outlaw; "I am a man like my forefathers--while wrapt in the mantle of peace, we were lambs--it was rent from us, and ye now call us wolves.

Give us the huts ye have burned, our children whom ye have murdered, our widows whom ye have starved--collect from the gibbet and the pole the mangled carcasses, and whitened skulls of our kinsmen--bid them live and bless us, and we will be your vassals and brothers--till then, let death, and blood, and mutual wrong, draw a dark veil of division between us." "You will then do nothing for your liberty," said the Campbell.
"Anything--but call myself the friend of your tribe," answered MacEagh.
"We scorn the friendship of banditti and caterans," retorted Murdoch, "and would not stoop to accept it .-- What I demand to know from you, in exchange for your liberty, is, where the daughter and heiress of the Knight of Ardenvohr is now to be found ?" "That you may wed her to some beggarly kinsman of your great master," said Ranald, "after the fashion of the Children of Diarmid! Does not the valley of Glenorquhy, to this very hour, cry shame on the violence offered to a helpless infant whom her kinsmen were conveying to the court of the Sovereign?
Were not her escort compelled to hide her beneath a cauldron, round which they fought till not one remained to tell the tale?
and was not the girl brought to this fatal castle, and afterwards wedded to the brother of M'Callum More, and all for the sake of her broad lands ?" [Such a story is told of the heiress of the clan of Calder, who was made prisoner in the manner described, and afterwards wedded to Sir Duncan Campbell, from which union the Campbells of Cawdor have their descent.] "And if the tale be true," said Murdoch, "she had a preferment beyond what the King of Scots would have conferred on her.

But this is far from the purpose.