g a dread which the presence of her mute lover did little
to remove or assuage.

"Is not that Ballochgray Castle?" said Marion, at last--"that fearfu place
whar the Baron of Ballochgray haulds his court with the Evil One, on every
Halloween night, when the bleak muirs are rife with the bad spirits o' the
earth and air. Whar drives the man, Geordie? Oh, tell him to turn awa frae
thae auld turrets and skreeching owls. I canna bear the sight o' the ane,
or the eerie sound o' the ither."

A smile was again the answer of her companion, and the carriage still drove
on to the well-known residence of the young Baron of Ballochgray--a man
who, knowing the weakness of his King, James the Third of Scotland, in his
love of astrology and divination, and their sister black arts, had, with
much address, endeavoured to recommend himself to his sovereign, by a
character pre-established in his own castle, for a successful cultivation
of the occult sciences. He had long withdrawn himself from the eyes of the
world, and even of his own tenants, and shut himself up in his castle, with
a due assortment of death's heads, charts, owls, globes, bones, astrolobes,
and vellum chronicles, with a view to the perfection of his hidden
knowledge; or, as some thought, with a view to produce such a fame of his
character and pursuits as might reach the ears of James, and acquire for
him that sway at court for which he sighed more than for real knowledge.
Some alleged that he was a cunning diplomatist, who cared no more for the
nostrums of astrology than he did for the dry bones that, while they
terrified his servants, had no more virtue in them than sap, and were, with
the other furniture of his dark study, collected for the mere purpose of
forwarding his ambitious designs upon the weak prince. His true character
was supposed to be--what he possessed before he took to his new
calling--that of a wild, eccentric, devil-daring man, who loved adventures
for their own sake, and worshipped the fair face of the "theekit and
tenanted skull" of a bouncing damsel, with far greater enthusiasm and
sincerity than he ever did his mortal osteological relics that lay in so
much profusion in the recesses of his old castle. But he had, doubtless, so
far succeeded in his plans; for he possessed a most unenviable fame for all
sort of cantrips and sorceries; and the wandering beggar would rather have
solicited a bit of bread from the iron hand of misery itself, than ventured