g himself, for the Captain's nose
now gave the most indisputable signs that he was fast locked in the arms
of oblivion.

"If you mean the ears of that snorting swine, my lord," said Anderson,
"they are, indeed, shut to anything that you can say; nevertheless, this
place being unfit for more private conference, I hope you will have the
goodness to proceed, for Sibbald's benefit and for mine. The history of
this poor young fellow has a deep and wild interest in it."

"You must know, then," proceeded Lord Menteith, "that Allan continued to
increase in strength and activity, till his fifteenth year, about which
time he assumed a total independence of character, and impatience of
control, which much alarmed his surviving parent. He was absent in the
woods for whole days and nights, under pretence of hunting, though he
did not always bring home game. His father was the more alarmed, because
several of the Children of the Mist, encouraged by the increasing
troubles of the state, had ventured back to their old haunts, nor did
he think it altogether safe to renew any attack upon them. The risk
of Allan, in his wanderings, sustaining injury from these vindictive
freebooters, was a perpetual source of apprehension.

"I was myself upon a visit to the castle when this matter was brought
to a crisis. Allan had been absent since day-break in the woods, where
I had sought for him in vain; it was a dark stormy night, and he did not
return. His father expressed the utmost anxiety, and spoke of detaching
a party at the dawn of morning in quest of him; when, as we were sitting
at the supper-table, the door suddenly opened, and Allan entered the
room with a proud, firm, and confident air. His intractability of
temper, as well as the unsettled state of his mind, had such an
influence over his father, that he suppressed all other tokens of
displeasure, excepting the observation that I had killed a fat buck, and
had returned before sunset, while he supposed Allan, who had been on
the hill till midnight,

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