are hollowed out here in the rock on
which the house is founded, which they told us belonged to Bruce; the
tradition being, that he was hidden here for some months. There was his
bed room, dining room, sitting room, and a very curious apartment where
the walls were all honeycombed into little partitions, which they called
his library, these little partitions being his book shelves. There are
small loophole windows in these apartments, where you can look up and
down the glen, and enjoy a magnificent prospect. For my part, I thought
if I were Bruce, sitting there with a book in my lap, listening to the
gentle brawl of the Esk, looking up and down the glen, watching the
shaking raindrops on the oaks, the birches and beeches, I should have
thought that was better than fighting, and that my pleasant little cave
was as good an arbor on the Hill Difficulty as ever mortal man enjoyed.

There is a ponderous old two-handed sword kept here, said to have
belonged to Sir William Wallace. It is considerably shorter than it was
originally, but, resting on its point, it reached to the chin of a good
six foot gentleman of our party. The handle is made of the horn of a
sea-horse, (if you know what that is,) and has a heavy iron ball at the
end. It must altogether have weighed some ten or twelve pounds. Think of
a man hewing away _on men_ with this!

There is a well in this cavern, down which we were directed to look and
observe a hole in the side; this we were told was the entrance to
another set of caverns and chambers under those in which we were, and
to passages which extended down and opened out into the valley. In the
olden days the approach to these caverns was not through the house, but
through the side of a deep well sunk in the court yard, which
communicates through a subterranean passage with this well. Those
seeking entrance were let down by a windlass into the well in the court
yard, and drawn up by a windlass into this cavern. There was no such
accommodation at present, but we were told some enterprising tourists
had explored the lower caverns. Pleasant kind of times those old days
must have been, when houses had to be built like a rabbit burrow, with
all these accommodations for concealment and escape.

After exploring the caverns we came up into the parlors again, and Miss
S. showed me a Scottish album, in which were all sorts of sketches,
memorials, autographs, and other such matters. What interested me more,
she was ma