And she watch’d for the rising sun,
Till it blush’d on the stone-work, and gleam’d on the wood,
And the headsman’s work was done.
‘Not a limb she stirr’d; but when noon-day’s glow
Smote fierce on her temples bare,
A brighter sun had not melted the snow
That streak’d Lady Margaret’s hair.’
The morning broke dull and gloomy; the wind that had been blowing steadily all night had subsided towards dawn, but a chill easterly breeze was still creeping in from seaward, and a light vapour rested on the surface of the ocean, beneath which the lead-coloured waves rose and sank in the sullen monotony of a ground swell. Little by little the cheerless dawn stole imperceptibly over the rugged bluffs and scaurs that to the northward formed a bulwark for the town, and disclosed at every minute new rents and fissures in their sea-worn sides—new wisps of dripping sea-weed trailing in ungainly streaks across their slippery surface; the ebbing tide, too, receding as though unwillingly, with many a landward leap and backward whirl, disclosed here and there round black rocks, peering like the heads of sea-monsters above the restless waters, while a solitary sea-mew, turning on its white wing downward from the cliff, screamed, as it were, in disappointment of its fishing after the storm.
The castle walls rose sullenly against the misty sky; black, massive, and impenetrable, they suggested no feelings but those of inhospitable and uncompromising grandeur. Their battlements, weather-stained with the gales of centuries, frowned dark defiance down on the ruffled ocean, and the royal flag, with the golden lion of Scotland ramping in its folds, half-unfurled and dripping with last night’s brine, flapped drearily and heavily in the fitful breeze.
To and fro for a space of some twenty yards under the wall, a female figure was pacing with swift irregular steps, and her fingers twining convulsively as she held her hands clasped together before her. Mantle and dress were wet and disordered from the inclemency of the past night, but the hood of the former covered her to the brows, and it was only by the lower part of her white, rigid face, that a passer-by, had there been one at that early hour, could have recognised Mary Hamilton.