CHAPTER XXIII.
My maid--my blue-eyed maid, he bore away, Due to the toils of many a bloody day .-- ILLIAD.
It was necessary, for many reasons, that Angus M'Aulay, so long the kind protector of Annot Lyle, should be made acquainted with the change in the fortunes of his late protege; and Montrose, as he had undertaken, communicated to him these remarkable events.

With the careless and cheerful indifference of his character, he expressed much more joy than wonder at Annot's good fortune; had no doubt whatever she would merit it, and as she had always been bred in loyal principles, would convey the whole estate of her grim fanatical father to some honest fellow who loved the king.

"I should have no objection that my brother Allan should try his chance," added he, "notwithstanding that Sir Duncan Campbell was the only man who ever charged Darnlinvarach with inhospitality.

Annot Lyle could always charm Allan out of the sullens, and who knows whether matrimony might not make him more a man of this world ?" Montrose hastened to interrupt the progress of his castle-building, by informing him that the lady was already wooed and won, and, with her father's approbation, was almost immediately to be wedded to his kinsman, the Earl of Menteith; and that in testimony of the high respect due to M'Aulay, so long the lady's protector, he was now to request his presence at the ceremony.

M'Aulay looked very grave at this intimation, and drew up his person with the air of one who thought that he had been neglected.
"He contrived," he said, "that his uniform kind treatment of the young lady, while so many years under his roof, required something more upon such an occasion than a bare compliment of ceremony.