y were carrying her was more than Lady Carse herself could
discover. To the day of her death she never knew what country she had
traversed during the dreary and fatiguing week which ensued. She saw
Stirling Castle standing up on its mighty rock against the dim sky; and
she knew that before dawn they had entered the Highlands.

But beyond this she was wholly ignorant. In those days there were no
milestones on the road she travelled. The party went near no town,
stopped at no inn, and never permitted her an opportunity of speaking to
anyone out of their own number. They always halted before daylight at
some solitary house--left open for them, but uninhabited--or at some
cowshed, where they shook down straw for her bed, made a fire, and
cooked their food; and at night they always remounted, and rode for many
hours, through a wild country, where the most hopeful of captives could
not dream of rescue. Sometimes they carried torches while ascending a
narrow ravine, where a winter torrent dashed down the steep rocks and
whirled away below, and where the lady unawares showed her desire to
live by clinging faster to the horseman behind whom she rode. Sometimes
she saw the whole starry hemisphere resting like a dome on a vast
moorland, the stars rising from the horizon here and sinking there, as
at sea.

The party rarely passed any farmsteads or other dwellings; and when they
did silence was commanded, and the riders turned their horses on the
grass or soft earth, in order to appear as little as possible like a
cavalcade to any wakeful ears. Once, on such an occasion, Lady Carse
screamed aloud; but this only caused her to be carried at a gallop,
which instantly silenced her, and then to be gagged for the rest of the
night. She would have promised to make no such attempt again, such a
horror had she now of the muffle which bandaged her mouth, but nobody
asked her to promise. On the contrary, she heard one man say to
another, that the lady might scream all night long now, if she liked;
nobody but the eagles would answer her, now she was among the Frasers.

Among the Frasers! Then she was on Lord Lovat's estates. Here there
was no hope for her; and all her anxiety was to get on, though every
step removed her further from her friends, and from the protection of
law. But this was exactly the place where she was to stop for a
considerable time.

Having arrived at a solitary house among moorland hills, Mr Forster
told h