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?"
"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. The daughter of Sir Duncan of Ardenvohr is of our own blood, not a stranger; and who has so good a right to know her fate as M'Callum More, the chief of her clan?"
