nchor in the
Sound. With speed which seemed like magic, the white canvas
disappeared, and the tall masts and the yards and the light tracery of
the rigging could only dimly be traced against the clear sky.

Whence the stranger had come, or for what object, Hilda could not tell,
but still she had a feeling--how communicated she did not inquire--that
the event portended some great change in her own fate. Painful
forebodings of evil came crowding like mocking phantoms around her. She
tried with the exercise of her own strong will to banish them. In vain
she strove--the more they seemed to mock her power. She felt as if she
could almost have shrieked out in the agony of her mortal struggle, till
her proud spirit quailed and trembled with unwonted fears. Again the
clock tolled forth a solitary sound, which vibrated strangely on her
overwrought nerves, and seemed more sonorous than usual. She pressed
her hand upon her brow, then by an effort she seemed by a single gasp to
recover herself, and, closing the window, retired to her sleeping
chamber in that part of the house in the immediate neighbourhood of her
favourite tower.

At an early hour the lady of the castle was on foot. She at once
ascended to the summit of her tower, and gazed eagerly up the Sound,
half expecting to find that she had been deceived by her imagination on
the previous night, and that the ship she had seen was but a creation of
the brain. There, however, floated the beautiful fabric, but there was
not the slightest movement or sign of life on board. At all events, it
seemed improbable that she would soon move from her present position.
At length she descended to her boudoir below, where, as usual, her light
and frugal meal was brought to her by her own attendant, Nanny Clousta.

Her meal, at which Nanny stood ready to help her to anything she
required, being quickly concluded, Miss Wardhill descended to the large
hall on the ground-floor, in the centre of the castle. It was a
handsome room, with an arched ceiling of dark oak, supported by pillars
round the wall. A long table ran down the centre, at one end of which,
on a raised platform or dais, she took her seat. Several tenants of the
Lunnasting estate came in to make complaints, to beg for the redress of
grievances, to report on the state of the farms, or fisheries, or
kelp-collecting; to all of which the lady listened with the most perfect
attention, making notes in a book placed before