h the thickness of the outer walls
secret stairs connected mysterious chambers one with another. Strange
deeds had been done in those low-roofed rooms with their dark carved
furniture, and there were secret places in the castle where ghosts of
the past had their habitation. Weird figures were said to flit through
the castle at night, restless spirits which revisited the scene of
former tragedies and crimes, and the room in which Graham slept was
known to be haunted. Alas! he needed no troubled ancestor of the
Strathmore house to visit him, for his own thoughts were sufficient
torment, and through the brief summer night and then through the
dawning light of the morning he threshed the question which gnawed his
heart. Evil suggestions and suspicious remembrances of the past, which
would have fled before the sunlight, surrounded him and looked out at
him from the shadow with gibbering faces. Had he not been told that
Jean laid traps for him in Paisley that she might secure the safety of
her lover Pollock, and also of her kinsman, Sir John Cochrane? Had she
not often spoken warmly of that Covenanting minister and expressed her
bitter regret that her husband had compassed Pollock's death? She had
tried to keep him from attending the Convention, and of late days had
often suggested that he had better be at peace and not stir up the
country. After all, can you take out of the life what is bred in the
bone?--and Jean Cochrane was of a Covenanting stock, and her mother a
very harridan of bigotry. Might there not have been some sense in the
fear of his friends that he would no longer be loyal to the good
cause, and was Jock Grimond's grudge against his marriage mere
stupidity and jealousy? Everyone was securing his safety and adjusting
himself to the new regime; there was hardly a Lowland gentleman who
had irretrievably pledged himself to King James, and as for the
chiefs, they would fight for their own hand as they had always done,
and could only be counted on for one thing, and that was securing
plunder. Was not he alone, and would not he soon be either on the
scaffold or an exile? The Whigs would soon be reigning in their glory
over Scotland, and it would be well with everyone that had their
password. If he were out of the way, would there not be a strong
temptation for her to make terms with her family and buy security by
loyalty to their side? No doubt she was a strong woman, but, after
all, she was only a woman, and was she