The warrior seemed to writhe during the conflict.  His hands were clenched, and every muscle stiffened with agony.  Scorn at his own weakness, and dread, horrible undefinable dread, as he felt the omnipotent power mastering his proud spirit.  The man who would have laughed at the shaking of a spear, and the loud rush of the battle, quailed before a woman’s hate and a woman’s love.

“And what is thy request to-night?” said Holt.

The stranger answered in a voice of thunder—­

“Thy daughter!”

Tyrone, for it was he, seemed nigh choking with the emotion he sought to suppress.

“Nay,” he continued, “it must not be.  Oh! did I love her less, she had been mine!”

“Thine?” suddenly retorted her father, somewhat scornfully.  “And who gave thee this power over woman’s spirit?  Thou hast not even had speech of her, much less the means to win her favour.”

An almost supernatural expression seemed to gather on the features of the chieftain.  His eye, rolling through the vista of past years, began to pause, appalled as it approached the dark threshold of the future.  He appeared lost to the presence of surrounding objects, as he thus exclaimed with a terrific solemnity—­

“When the dark-browed Norah nursed me on her lap, and her eye, though dark to outward sense, saw through the dim veil of destiny, it was thus she sung as she guarded my slumbers, and the hated Sassenach was in the hall:—­

    “’Rest thee, baby! light and darkness
      Mingling o’er thy path shall play;
    Hope shall flee when thou pursuest,
      Lost amid life’s trackless way.

    “’Rest thee, baby! woman’s breast
      Thou shalt darken o’er with woe;
    None thou lookest on or lovest,
      Joy or hope hereafter know. 
        Many a maid thy glance shall rue,
        Where it smites it shall subdue.’

“It was an evil hour, old man, when I looked upon thy daughter.”

Holt, though of a stout and resolute temper, was yet daunted by this bold and unlooked-for address.  He trembled as he gazed on the mysterious being before him, gifted, as it seemed, with some supernatural endowments.  His unaccountable appearance, the nature of his communications, together with his manner and abrupt mode of speech, would have shaken many a firmer heart unprepared for these disclosures.

“What is thy business with me?” he inquired, with some hesitation.

“To warn thee;—­to warn thy daughter.  She hath seen me.  Ay, to-night.  And how runs the prophecy?  Let her beware.  I have looked on her beforetime.  Looked on her! ay, until these glowing orbs have become dim, dazzled with excess of brightness.  I have looked on her till this stern bosom hath become softer than the bubbling wax to her impression; but I was concealed, and the maiden passed unharmed by the curse.  To-night I have saved her life.  A resistless impulse!  And she hath looked on me.”  He smote his brow, groaning aloud in the agony he endured.