minute another
spire came into view, and two great towers. Rollo thought it was a
castle. I said that a castle would not have a spire on it. Rollo said
that a church would not have two spires on it. It turned out that both
of us were mistaken; for the building was the inn.

"It was a very extraordinary looking inn. It was built of stone, with
towers and battlements, like an old castle. The inside was very
extraordinary, too. The public room looked, as Mr. George said, like an
old Gothic hall of the middle ages. There were tables set out here for
people to have breakfasts and dinners, and Mr. George ordered a dinner
for us. There were other parties of tourists there, some coming, and
some going.

"While the dinner was getting ready, Rollo and I walked about the inn,
and in the yards. It was a very curious place indeed. Close behind it
were lofty mountains, which, Rollo said, looked like the mountains of
Switzerland; only there were no snow peaks on the top of them. There was
no village, and there were no houses near, except two or three stone
hovels in the woods behind the inn. Before the inn, in a little valley
just below it, was a pond, such as they call here a loch.

"Mr. George decided to go directly on to Stirling, because it was
Saturday night, and he did not wish, he said, to spend Sunday at such a
lonesome inn. So we hired a carriage and set off. Immediately we began
to come out from the mountains, and to get into the level country. The
country soon grew very beautiful. The sun was behind our backs, and it
shone right upon every thing that we wished to see, and made the whole
country look very green and very brilliant. There were parks, and
gardens, and pleasure grounds, and queer villages, and ruins of old
castles on the hills, and little lochs in the valleys, and every thing
beautiful.

"At last we came in sight of Stirling Castle. It stood on the top of a
high, rocky hill. The hill was very high and steep on all sides but one,
where it sloped down towards the town. The country all around was very
level, so that we could see the castle a great many miles away.

"We rode around the foot of the castle hill, under the rocks, and at
last came into the town, and drove to the hotel.

"WALDRON."

CHAPTER X.

STIRLING.

Stirling Castle crowns the summit of a rocky hill, which rises on the
banks of the Forth, in the midst of a vast extent of level and
richly-cultivated c