d the mountain passes were incumbered, and often
slippery from the fallen leaves. The mountains looked frowning and bare,
the pine and fir bent and rocked in their craggy cradles, and the wind
moaned through their dark branches sadly and painfully. The sun had,
indeed, shone fitfully through the day, but still the scene was one of
melancholy desolation, and the heart of the Countess of Buchan, bold and
firm in general, could not successfully resist the influence of Nature's
sadness. She sat comparatively alone; a covering had, indeed, been
thrown over some thick poles, which interwove with brushwood, and with a
seat and couch of heather, which was still in flower, formed a rude
tent, and was destined for her repose; but until night's dark mantle was
fully unfurled, she had preferred the natural seat of a jutting crag,
sheltered from the wind by an overhanging rock and some spreading firs.
Her companions were scattered in different directions in search of food,
as was their wont. Some ten or fifteen men had been left with her, and
they were dispersed about the mountain collecting firewood, and a supply
of heath and moss for the night encampment; within hail, indeed, but
scarcely within sight, for the space where the countess sate commanded
little more than protruding crags and stunted trees, and mountains
lifting their dark, bare brows to the starless sky.

It was not fear which had usurped dominion in the Lady Isabella's heart,
it was that heavy, sluggish, indefinable weight which sometimes clogs
the spirit we know not wherefore, until some event following quick upon
it forces us, even against our will, to believe it the overhanging
shadow of the future which had darkened the present. She was sad, very
sad, yet she could not, as was ever her custom, bring that sadness to
judgment, and impartially examining and determining its cause, remove it
if possible, or banish it resolutely from her thoughts.

An impulse indefinable, yet impossible to be resisted, had caused her to
intrust her Agnes to the care of Lady Mary and Nigel, and compelled her
to follow her son, who had been the chosen companion of the king.
Rigidly, sternly, she had questioned her own heart as to the motives of
this decision. It was nothing new her accompanying her son, for she had
invariably done so; but it was something unusual her being separated
from the queen, and though her heart told her that her motives were so
upright, so pure, they could have bo