ising its scathed brow into the mists of middle sky,
while a solitary watch-tower, perched on its top like an eagle's nest,
gave dignity to the scene by awakening a sense of possible danger.
All these, and every other accompaniment of this noble scene, Captain
Dalgetty might have marked, if he had been so minded. But, to confess
the truth, the gallant Captain, who had eaten nothing since daybreak,
was chiefly interested by the smoke which ascended from the castle
chimneys, and the expectations which this seemed to warrant of his
encountering an abundant stock of provant, as he was wont to call
supplies of this nature.

The boat soon approached the rugged pier, which abutted into the loch
from the little town of Inverary, then a rude assemblage of huts, with a
very few stone mansions interspersed, stretching upwards from the banks
of Loch Fine to the principal gate of the castle, before which a scene
presented itself that might easily have quelled a less stout heart,
and turned a more delicate stomach, than those of Ritt-master Dugald
Dalgetty, titular of Drumthwacket.

CHAPTER XII.

For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,
Restless, unfix'd in principle and place,
In power unpleased, impatient in disgrace.
--ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL.

The village of Inverary, now a neat country town, then partook of the
rudeness of the seventeenth century, in the miserable appearance of the
houses, and the irregularity of the unpaved street. But a stronger and
more terrible characteristic of the period appeared in the market-place,
which was a space of irregular width, half way betwixt the harbour, or
pier, and the frowning castle-gate, which terminated with its gloomy
archway, portcullis, and flankers, the upper end of the vista. Midway
this space was erected a rude gibbet, on which hung five dead bodies,
two of which from their dress seemed to have been Lowlanders, and the
other three corpses were muffled in their Highland plaids. Two or three
women sate under the gallows, who seemed to be mourning, and singing
the coronach of the deceased in a low voice. But the spectacle was
apparently of too ordinary occurrence to have much interest for the
inhabitants at large, who, while they thronged to look at the military
figure, the horse of an unusual size, and the burnished panoply of
Captain Dalgetty, seemed to bestow no attention whatever on the piteous
spectacle w