In which the ever-melancholy MacGregor unfolds the heavy burden of his outlawed name and the vexed state of his family, while the narrator, moved by sympathy and a growing sense of inevitable turmoil, contemplates offers of foreign refuge for the sons of the outlawed chief. They traverse the rugged Highlands to a sombre but stately reception at MacGregor’s home, where solemn tokens and mournful farewells deepen the shadow of the wild and passionate lives they lead amidst the storm-clouds of an unsettled land.