"Dias Muire let! Can you ask? to seek honour for ourselves, and to add one ray to the martial glory which for ages has encircled the tribes of the Gael."
Fired by the romantic energy of my stately Highland kinsman--
"Ian," I replied, "I am sorely tempted; for you open up the path I have so long wished to pursue. Here I have nothing left to care for, and, if you allow me, I will gladly trail a pike under your orders, and march to the wars of Low Germanie."
"There spoke the M'Farquhar blood, and I was thinking you no better than a Lowlander!" said Ian, his eyes flashing as he clapped me on the shoulder; "but it shall never be said that a kinsman so near and so dear to Ian Dhu, trailed a pike as a private man under our banner, when so many Gunns, Grants, and Munroes, cock their bonnets as commissioned officers. I shall write to my kinsman, Sir Donald, and in a fortnight from this time you shall hear from me. Come, take new courage! together we will push our fortune in these foreign wars, and in the hour of battle and danger, my hundred steel hearts of your mother's tribe will be ever as a shirt of mail around you, Philip!"
I gave my hand upon it to this high-spirited youth, whose energy--as he spoke in his native Gaëlic--I cannot infuse into this dialogue, which is written from memory.
"I will leave this place, Ian, with sensations of bitterness rather than regret," said I, as we ascended to my father's tower; "the only being who would have wept for my departure we laid yesterday in yonder chapel, on which the morning sun now shines so redly. None seem to love me here----"
"From my birth my father has hated me, because----" (I could not mention the ridiculous reason, for it always filled me with anger.)
"I was not a girl, whom you might have married."
Ian burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter, and kissed the silver brooch by which his plaid was fastened.
"By my soul! I think my good uncle was mistaken; for the more sons a baron hath to defend his hearth-stone and hall-door, the better in these unruly times."
"I was born on a Friday, too, and that day has ever been regarded in all countries as an unlucky one."
"Because it was the day on which our Saviour died," said Ian, uncovering his head; "and doubtless," he added with a smile, "it is an unlucky day on which to march, to fight, to hunt, or to marry; but as for being born--Dioul! as that is an event over which we possess no control in our own proper persons, I cannot see any ill fortune in it. And you will quit your student's cap for the bright helmet, your studies for the camp and leaguer, without regret?"