g of some part of the door, producing a sound
as if the door-post was wrenched from its position, was followed by
another wrestle, evidently upon the narrow ledge which ran outside the
door, overtopping the precipice. This proved to be the final struggle,
for it was followed by a crashing sound as if some heavy body had fallen
over, and was rushing down the precipice, through the light boughs that
crossed near the top. All then became still as the grave, except when
the moan of the night wind sighed up the wooded glen.

The old servant had not nerve to return through the hall, and to him the
darkness seemed all but endless; but morning at length came, and with
it the disclosure of the events of the night. Near the door, upon the
ground, lay Sir Robert's sword-belt, which had given way in the scuffle.
A huge splinter from the massive door-post had been wrenched off by
an almost superhuman effort--one which nothing but the gripe of a
despairing man could have severed--and on the rock outside were left the
marks of the slipping and sliding of feet.

At the foot of the precipice, not immediately under the castle, but
dragged some way up the glen, were found the remains of Sir Robert, with
hardly a vestige of a limb or feature left distinguishable. The right
hand, however, was uninjured, and in its fingers were clutched, with the
fixedness of death, a long lock of coarse sooty hair--the only direct
circumstantial evidence of the presence of a second person. So says
tradition.

This story, as I have mentioned, was current among the dealers in such
lore; but the original facts are so dissimilar in all but the name of
the principal person mentioned and his mode of life, and the fact that
his death was accompanied with circumstances of extraordinary mystery,
that the two narratives are totally irreconcilable (even allowing the
utmost for the exaggerating influence of tradition), except by supposing
report to have combined and blended together the fabulous histories
of several distinct bearers of the family name. However this may be, I
shall lay before the reader a distinct recital of the events from which
the foregoing tradition arose. With respect to these there can be no
mistake; they are authenticated as fully as anything can be by human
testimony; and I state them principally upon the evidence of a lady who
herself bore a prominent part in the strange events which she related,
and which I now record as being among the few