iation was
entered into with the Earl of Ross to grant them a safe conduct through
his lands, and permission to enter the sanctuary of St. Duthac.

Perplexed with many sad thoughts, Nigel Bruce was one day slowly
traversing a long gallery leading to some uninhabited chambers in the
west wing of the building; it was of different architecture, and ruder,
heavier aspect than the remainder of the castle. Tradition said that
those rooms had been the original building inhabited by an ancestor of
the line of Bruce, and the remainder had been gradually added to them;
that some dark deed of blood had been there committed, and consequently
they were generally kept locked, none of the vassals in the castle
choosing to run the risk of meeting the spirits which they declared
abode there. We have before said that Nigel was not superstitious,
though his mind being of a cast which, adopting and embodying the ideal,
he was likely to be supposed such. The particulars of the tradition he
had never heard, and consequently it was always with a smile of
disbelief he listened to the oft-repeated injunction not to walk at dusk
in the western turret. This warning came across him now, but his mind
was far otherwise engrossed, too much so indeed for him even to give
more than a casual glance to the rude portraits which hung on either
side the gallery.

He mistrusted the Earl of Ross, and there came a fear upon his noble
spirit that, in permitting the departure of the queen and her
attendants, he might be liable to the censure of his sovereign, that he
was failing in his trust; yet how was he to act, how put a restraint
upon his charge? Had he indeed believed that the defence of the castle
would be successful, that he should be enabled to force the besiegers
to raise the siege, he might perhaps have felt justified in restraining
the queen--but he did not feel this. He had observed there were many
discontented and seditious spirits in the castle, not indeed in the
three hundred of his immediate followers; but what were they compared to
the immense force now pouring over the country, and whose goal he knew
was Kildrummie? The increase of inmates also, from the number of small
villages which had emptied their inhabitants into his walls till he was
compelled to prevent further ingress, must inevitably diminish his
stores, and when once blockaded, to replenish them would be impossible.
No personal fears, no weakness of purpose entered the high soul of