eyes angrily, of course understanding nothing of her purpose. "Ye have given my life away, an' what d'ye want now?" he said hoarsely, and she was staggered for an instant, for she had forgotten how his thoughts must have been running during those days and nights in the Zabuloe lock-up. Then came the sergeant's shout, further demoralising her. But a moment later the sergeant turned round to the innkeeper with, "I'm not the man to refuse 'em a pot; 'tis their last, belike," and for that moment Milly was unwatched.

"Quick, there's a knife in under,” she whispered to Hocken, and he still not understanding, she grasped the knife in one hand, still under cover of the tracts, and with a desperate effort of her wrist cut the ropes clean through. "Run, Ralphie!" she shrieked aloud, and in another moment, before a man of the fencibles could grasp the situation, he had clambered over the stone dyke beside the road, and was flying across the pasture towards the hollow and its sheltering underwood.

Of course there was pursuit, but for the moment it was not understood who was to stand by the remaining prisoners, and who to follow the fugitive. Indeed, the fencibles showed no vast alacrity in either proceeding. "Lay hold o' that woman," the sergeant shouted, as in duty bound, but in the prevailing confusion no one heeded the order. The foremost fencibles were still a good twenty yards behind Hocken, and encumbered as they were with their firearms-though no one thought of firing-they had little chance of coming up with him, even if their tight-fitting uniforms, with the rigid cross-bands of the tunic, had not been the worst possible costume for running in that the wit of man could devise. Down he fled, scrambling over dyke after dyke, towards the hollow; till, seeing how matters were going, the sergeant himself joined in the pursuit. At this juncture Milly seized the chance of stealing away, and followed in the wake of the chase, none of the remaining soldiers attempting to arrest her.

She reached the sharp descent overhanging the valley, and watched the red-coats slowly struggling through the dusky undergrowth, beating it apparently in every direction in their search for the fugitive. That patch of woodland seemed such a little thing from up here, that her heart stood still, expecting every moment to hear a whoop of triumph when they laid hands on him. But still there was no sound but the faint crashing of branches, and now the scarlet figures were becoming lost to sight, blurred among thicker recesses of the naked branches. An intense desire to know dragged her on; she scrambled down the slope, forced her way through a hedge, and forded a stream,

ankle-deep, till at last she found herself standing in the coppice. She then saw that, looking from the height above, she had wholly misjudged its extent; it was a spacious valley bottom, with broad sheets of vivid green moss between its thickets, and, better still, whole seas of dead, rusty bracken still standing high enough for a man to lie hidden in, unless you trod on him, and dense clusters of hazels and oaks, in their winter nakedness now, but wonderfully thick-set, and with plentiful hollies in among them, making the woodland denser. Milly wandered on through this wilderness, expecting she hardly knew what, and the sound of the fencibles searching the coppices grew continually fainter. It ceased at last, and she was aware of a great silence in the valley. And suddenly a deathly weakness came over her, and a strange terror followed it. She hoped, and indeed believed, that Ralph Hocken was far away by now, but a mysterious instinct prompted her to call to him aloud by his name. Her own voice sounded unnaturally thin and shrill to her, as she repeated the call from time to time, dragging herself meanwhile along a half-beaten pathway among the bushes, till, seeing a green bed of moss, the temptation to rest grew overpowering, and she sank down upon it, half swooning. The woodland swam before her eyes with a dream-like vagueness; it seemed to her part of the general unreality of things when Ralph Hocken stepped out of the brushwood, and advanced towards her.

"Be they fencibles gone away ?" he asked, glancing warily round him.

"Sure I hope they be," she said, looking up at him with a white face, "for I wanted to say good-bye to 'ee."

"What be talking about noo?" he answered, like a man with business on his mind. "I heard 'ee callin'. Surely ye do go beyond me altogether these days."

"I be about to die,

She stretched out a hand to cling to him. Ralphie," she said faintly, and her young lips were bitterly set, so that her voice was only a whisper. "Ye see, I've been out an' about overmuch lately for one in my condition, and now I knows it in myself."

Something in her voice drove conviction into him.

"Come, we'll set that a' straight again," he said, with an affected calm, as he helped her to rise; but his face was very grave, and he seemed wholly to have forgotten his pursuers. He half carried her to a little farmhouse standing beside the lane that led down the valley.

Arrived there, the farm people, recognising the necessity of the

case, at once put Milly to bed, and though no wedding ring was visible on her hand, they, being simple, perhaps half barbarous, people, made no scruple about Hocken remaining with her. She turned to him, very drawn and wan. "Ye'd best be going off, Ralph," she said, with the hard recognition of facts that belongs to the poor. "Twould be simple like for me to die and the fencibles catch ye too. There'd be nothing left o' either of us then, I'm thinking."

"Ye bean't going to die, Milly," he said, with exaggerated scorn; but she only nodded her head slowly and faintly.

"I'll stay with 'ee, then, s'elp me I will!" he cried out, with big tears streaming down his face. "I'll stay with 'ee, and I'll break their heads like rotted apples if they come nigh, so I will."

"Don't 'ee, now, Ralph," she said, absorbed in her one thought of getting him out of danger. "Maybe I'm not so bad as I'm fancying; but I couldn't bear no noise now, Ralphie."

He remained, however, till the farmer's wife opened the door, and looked at them queerly.

"I don't know who ye be, measter," she said to Ralph, with a curious aloofness in her voice; "but here's fencibles coming oop the road again."

"Do 'ee go," Milly's voice, or the ghost of it, pleaded. "D'ye see, if I'm to die, 'tis no harm if thee art away from Zabuloe altogether. An' if I be to keep in life," she added, struggling with the words, "an' they took and hanged 'ee, what be I to do then?"

He remained bending over her, till there came a thunderous knock at the farmhouse door. The farmer's wife ran in with

unconcealed emotion.

"Out at the back door wi' 'ee, and get oot along by the henhouse," she cried in an agitated whisper. "Drat the man, can't ye

see 'twould kill the poor lassie to have ye took!"

She pushed him forcibly outside. Either yielding to her sense of the situation, or else from the simple instinct of self-preservation, he took the back way from the farm, and reaching the moors again, effected his escape.

It was by another road that Milly herself escaped from the toils about her, for she and her child lay together, white and still, before morning. Four days later they were buried in Zabuloe churchyard, in the presence of a great concourse of people, attracted thither by the strange story which had got abroad concerning her. They are emotional folks in those parts, no doubt; but when they told how at one moment even the Rector's voice quavered and broke down, it is quite possible they affirmed no more than the truth.

LORD MACAULAY'S ANCESTORS.

"E

VERY schoolboy" knows that Lord Macaulay was the eldest son of Zachary Macaulay, who identified himself with the anti-slavery movement in England early in the present century. But even Macaulay's famous schoolboy might have difficulty in tracing his patron's genealogy back to the sixteenth century; and still greater difficulty, perhaps, in describing off-hand any notable deeds performed by the historian's forbears. To the student of heredity, as well as the student of Macaulay, it may be of interest to learn that he came of a fighting, a writing, a preaching, and a political stock; a combination which culminated in the person of one, the pugnacity of whose political temperament was only equalled by the brilliancy and the versatility of his literary genius.

The origin of a large proportion of the Highland clans is a matter of conjecture. Historians differ in ascribing to them, respectively, native and foreign beginnings. The origin of the Clan Macaulay admits of no doubt it is pure Norse. Macaulay's forbears hailed from Lewis, the largest, that is, Lewis with Harris, of the Western Isles of Scotland, which for centuries lay under the dominion of the Norse marauders. The supposed progenitor of the Macaulays is Olaus Magnus of Norway, who is the hero of an ode, entitled "Olaus the Great, or the Conquest of Mona," written by Lord Macaulay at the tender age of eight. The name Olaus has been variously rendered as Olaf and Olave, and in an ancient manuscript it appears as Olay. Macaulay is the Gaelicised form of Olaf's son, and is synonymous with the modern Scandinavian name of Olafsson. Traces of the Norse occupation of Lewis are evident in numerous place-names, as well as in certain customs and in the folklore of the inhabitants of that island. Indeed, there are Lewis Macaulays to-day, whose Scandinavian appearance is alone sufficient to attest their origin. Some of them claim relationship, necessarily distant, with the great Lord Macaulay, and are quite prepared to assert that his genius was the concentrated result of the use by his ancestors for centuries of a diet of fish and oatmeal! In this view they are supported by no

less an authority than Carlyle, who, on one occasion, upon seeing Macaulay's face in unwonted repose, remarked, "I noticed the homely Norse features that you find everywhere in the Western Isles, and I thought to myself, 'Well, anyone can see that you are an honest, good sort of fellow made out of oatmeal.'" The writer recollects one of the Lewis Macaulays, now dead, who was particularly proud of his illustrious connection. Although his know ledge of general literature was, to say the least, limited, he could recite the "Lays" by heart, and quotations from the "Essays" interlarded his everyday conversation. This was a tribute from a humble clansman which would probably have gratified the kindly heart of Macaulay. Hero-worship among Highlanders is by no means an uncommon sentiment, and the great figure of Macaulay was well calculated to inspire the breasts of his Hebridean namesakes with that feeling.

The first of his ancestors of whom there is any authentic record was Donald Macaulay, who lived in the reign of King James VI. It was a common practice in the Highlands in those days—a practice which is still largely followed-to distinguish the possessors of marked physical peculiarities by nicknames having reference to their infirmities. Donald Macaulay was blind of one eye, and for that reason was known by his fellow-Lewismen as Donald Cam. The one-eyed progenitor of Lord Macaulay was a man of great physical strength, which in those troublous times he had many opportunities of turning to good-or bad-account.

In a book entitled "The Highlands of Scotland in 1750," recently edited by Mr. Andrew Lang, the statement appears that "The common inhabitants of Lewis are Morisons, McAulays, and McKivers" (Macivers); as a matter of fact they are to this day, with the Macleods, the representative Lewis families. The Macaulays were at constant feud with the Morisons, or Clan Gilliemhuire, who were located at Ness, on the north side of the island, and of whom were the breves, or hereditary Celtic judges, of Lewis. It is more than probable that the Morisons knew Donald Cam only too well for their peace of mind. But events occurred during his lifetime which united the Lewis clans in face of a common danger; and Donald Macaulay's prowess was directed into a more patriotic channel than had hitherto been the case. The Macleods-another clan of Norse origin-who, in Donald Cam's time, were the lords of Lewis-were quarrelling among themselves, and with the Mackenzies, of Kintail, in Ross-shire. The latter were scheming to obtain possession of the island. Taking advantage of the disturbed condition