clever thing, sir, for a
lady."

"She returns to Shaws-Castle by the Buck-stane road?"

"I suppose so, sir," said the groom. "It is the nighest, and Miss Clara
cares little for rough roads. Zounds! She can spank it over wet and
dry."

Tyrrel turned away from the man, and hastily left the hotel--not,
however, by the road which led to the Aultoun, but by a footpath among
the natural copsewood, which, following the course of the brook,
intersected the usual horse-road to Shaws-Castle, the seat of Mr.
Mowbray, at a romantic spot called the Buck-stane.

In a small peninsula, formed by a winding of the brook, was situated, on
a rising hillock, a large rough-hewn pillar of stone, said by tradition
to commemorate the fall of a stag of unusual speed, size, and strength,
whose flight, after having lasted through a whole summer's day, had
there terminated in death, to the honour and glory of some ancient baron
of St. Ronan's, and of his stanch hounds. During the periodical cuttings
of the copse, which the necessities of the family of St. Ronan's brought
round more frequently than Ponty would have recommended, some oaks had
been spared in the neighbourhood of this massive obelisk, old enough
perhaps to have heard the whoop and halloo which followed the fall of
the stag, and to have witnessed the raising of the rude monument by
which that great event was commemorated. These trees, with their broad
spreading boughs, made a twilight even of noon-day; and, now that the
sun was approaching its setting point, their shade already anticipated
night. This was especially the case where three or four of them
stretched their arms over a deep gully, through which winded the
horse-path to Shaws-Castle, at a point about a pistol-shot distant from
the Buck-stane. As the principal access to Mr. Mowbray's mansion was by
a carriage-way, which passed in a different direction, the present path
was left almost in a state of nature, full of large stones, and broken
by gullies, delightful, from the varied character of its banks, to the
picturesque traveller, and most inconvenient, nay dangerous, to him who
had a stumbling horse.

The footpath to the Buck-stane, which here joined the bridle-road, had
been constructed, at the expense of a subscription, under the direction
of Mr. Winterblossom, who had taste enough to see the beauties of this
secluded spot, which was exactly such as in earlier times might have
harboured the ambush of some marauding ch