Angry and ashamed at being detected in my singular occupation, I turned round sharply, and, I suppose, chance produced the change on my features which I had been in vain labouring to call forth.
The girl started back, with her 'Don't ya look so now--don't ye, for love's sake--you be as like the ould squoire as--But here a comes,' she said, huddling away out of the room; 'and if you want a third, there is none but ould Harry, as I know of, that can match ye for a brent broo!' As the girl muttered this exclamation, and hastened out of the room, Herries entered.

He stopped on observing that I had looked again to the mirror, anxious to trace the look by which the wench had undoubtedly been terrified.

He seemed to guess what was passing in my mind, for, as I turned towards him, he observed, 'Doubt not that it is stamped on your forehead--the fatal mark of our race; though it is not now so apparent as it will become when age and sorrow, and the traces of stormy passions and of bitter penitence, shall have drawn their furrows on your brow.' 'Mysterious man,' I replied, 'I know not of what you speak; your language is as dark as your purposes!' 'Sit down, then,' he said, 'and listen; thus far, at least, must the veil of which you complain be raised.

When withdrawn, it will only display guilt and sorrow--guilt followed by strange penalty, and sorrow which Providence has entailed upon the posterity of the mourners.' He paused a moment, and commenced his narrative, which he told with the air of one, who, remote as the events were which he recited, took still the deepest interest in them.

The tone of his voice, which I have already described as rich and powerful, aided by its inflections the effects of his story, which I will endeavour to write down, as nearly as possible, in the very words which he used.
'It was not of late years that the English learned that their best chance of conquering their independent neighbours must be by introducing amongst them division and civil war.