to the glen, the scene
of our story. It was of an evening, calm and tranquil as that on
which our tale opened, on a day in August, in the year 1815, that two
travellers, leaving the postillion of their carriage to refresh his
horses, advanced alone and on foot for above a mile into this tranquil
valley; the air had all that deathlike stillness so characteristic of
autumn, while over the mountains and the lake the same rich mellow light
was shed. As the travellers proceeded slowly, they stopped from time to
time, and gazed on the scene; and, although their looks met, and
glance seemed to answer glance, they neither of them spoke: from their
appearance, it might have been conjectured that they were foreigners.
The man, bronzed by weather and exposure, possessed features which, in
all their sternness, were yet eminently handsome: he wore a short thick
moustache, but the armless sleeve of his coat, fastened on the bosom,
was a sign still more indisputable than even his port and bearing, that
he was a soldier. His companion was a lady in the very pride and
bloom of beauty, but her dress, more remarkably than his, betrayed the
foreigner; in the rapid look she turned from the bold scenery around
them to the face of him at whose side she walked, one might read either
a direct appeal to memory, or the expression of wonder and admiration of
the spot. Too much engrossed by his own thoughts, or too deeply occupied
by the scene before him, the man moved on, until at last he came in
front of a low ruined wall, beneath a tall and overhanging cliff. He
stopped for some seconds, and gazed at this with such intentness as
prevented him from noticing the figure of a beggar, who, in all the
semblance of extreme poverty, sat crouching among the ruins. She was an
old, or at least seemed a very old woman--her hair, uncovered by cap or
hood, was white as snow, but her features still preserved an expression
of quick intelligence, as, lifting her head from the attitude of moping
thought, she fixed her eyes stedfastly on the travellers.

[Illustration: 480]

"Give her something, 'mon cher,'" said the lady to her companion in
French; but the request was twice made before he seemed conscious of
it. The woman, meanwhile, sat still, and neither made any demand for
charity, or any appeal to their compassion.

"This is Glenflesk, my good woman," said he at length, with the
intonation of a foreign accent on the words.

The woman nodded assentingly,