generate days. The solemn drinking-cup of the Kings of
Man must not be forgotten, nor the fairy banner given to Macleod by the
Queen of Fairies; that magic flag which has been victorious in two
pitched fields, and will still float in the third, the bloodiest and the
last, when the Elfin Sovereign shall, after the fight is ended, recall
her banner, and carry off the standard-bearer.

Amid such tales of ancient tradition I had from Macleod and his lady the
courteous offer of the haunted apartment of the castle, about which, as
a stranger, I might be supposed interested. Accordingly, I took
possession of it about the witching hour. Except perhaps some tapestry
hangings, and the extreme thickness of the walls, which argued great
antiquity, nothing could have been more comfortable than the interior of
the apartment; but if you looked from the windows the view was such as
to correspond with the highest tone of superstition. An autumnal blast,
sometimes driving mist before it, swept along the troubled billows of
the lake, which it occasionally concealed, and by fits disclosed. The
waves rushed in wild disorder on the shore, and covered with foam the
steep piles of rock, which, rising from the sea in forms something
resembling the human figure, have obtained the name of Macleod's
Maidens, and in such a night seemed no bad representatives of the
Norwegian goddesses called Choosers of the Slain, or Riders of the
Storm. There was something of the dignity of danger in the scene; for on
a platform beneath the windows lay an ancient battery of cannon, which
had sometimes been used against privateers even of late years. The
distant scene was a view of that part of the Quillan mountains which are
called, from their form, Macleod's Dining-Tables. The voice of an angry
cascade, termed the Nurse of Rorie Mhor, because that chief slept best
'in its vicinity, was heard from time to time mingling its notes with
those of wind and wave. Such was the haunted room at Dunvegan, and as
such it well deserved a less sleepy inhabitant. In the language of Dr.
Johnson, who has stamped his memory on this remote place, "I looked
around me, and wondered that I was not more affected; but the mind is
not at all times equally ready to be moved." In a word, it is necessary
to confess that, of all I heard or saw, the most engaging spectacle was
the comfortable bed, in which I hoped to make amends for some rough
nights on ship-board, and where I slept accordingl