Oh Castell Gloom! on thy fair wa's
Nae banners now are streamin';
The howlit flits amang thy ha's,
And wild birds there are screamin'.

Oh, mourn the woe! oh, mourn the crime
Frae civil war that flows!
Oh, mourn, Argyll, thy fallen line,
And mourn the great Montrose!

The lofty Ochils bright did glow,
Though sleepin' was the sun;
But mornin's light did sadly show
What ragin' flames had done!
Oh, mirk, mirk was the misty cloud
That hung o'er thy wild wood!
Thou wert like beauty in a shroud,
And all was solitude.

A volume, indeed, could be written upon the history, traditions, and
superstitions of Glencardine Castle, a subject in which its blind owner
took the keenest possible interest. But, tragedy of it all, he had never
seen the lovely old domain he had acquired! Only by Gabrielle's
descriptions of it, as she led him so often across the woods, down by
the babbling burn, or over the great ivy-covered ruins, did he know and
love it.

Every shepherd of the Ochils knows of the Lady of Glencardine who, on
rare occasions, had been seen dressed in green flitting before the
modern mansion, and who was said to be the spectre of the young Lady
Jane Glencardine, who in 1710 was foully drowned in the Earn by her
jealous lover, the Lord of Glamis, and whose body was never recovered.
Her appearance always boded ill-fortune to the family in residence.

Glencardine was scarcely ever without guests. Lady Heyburn, a shallow
and vain woman many years younger than her husband, was always
surrounded by her own friends. She hated the country, and more
especially what she declared to be the "deadly dullness" of her
Perthshire home. That moment was no exception. There were half-a-dozen
guests staying in the house, but neither Gabrielle nor her father took
the slightest interest in any of them. They had been, of course, invited
to the ball at Connachan, and at dinner had expressed surprise when
their host's pretty daughter, the belle of the county, had declared that
she was not going.

"Oh, Gabrielle is really such a wayward child!" declared her ladyship to
old Colonel Burton at her side. "If she has decided not to go, no power
on earth will persuade her."

"I'm not feeling at all well, mother," the girl responded from the
farther end of the table. "You'll make nice excuses for me, won't you?"

"I think it's simply ridiculous!" declared the Baronet's wife. "Your
fi