All around these ruins was desolate and bare; and, save a few sheep browsing on the sprouting herbage, there was no living thing near him. Bothwell could hear the pulses of his heart. He leant against the shaft of Umfraville's cross—a time-worn relic of antiquity, that in those days stood on the pathway near the chapel; and, folding his arms in his mantle, endeavoured to compose and arrange the tumult of his thoughts.
The spring evening was serene, and the scenery beautiful. Afar off, amid a blaze of saffron, the sun's flaming circle seemed to rest on the western flank of the magnificent Pentland chain; and each mountain came forward in strong warm light, while the valleys between were veiled in shadow.
The sound of a distant bell fell on the ear of the Earl.
"Seven o'clock," said he; "in three hours it will be time!"
Sheltered by towering hills, and overhung by the aspiring city, he saw the old monastic palace, sleeping, as it were, at the bottom of a dell, all seemed so still around it; and far beyond lay the dark blue German sea, dotted with the sails of Flemish crayers and galleys of Rochelle; but its bosom grew darker as the daylight died away behind the distant hills.
The shadows grew longer and darker, and obscurity veiled the valley where the palace lay.
Full upon Edina's castled rock and all her lofty hills, fell the last light of the western sun, from between glowing bars of golden cloud; and their giant shadows, broad, vast, and dewy, were thrown to the eastward, becoming, as the sun sunk, longer and longer, till they reached the ocean, that rolled upon the almost desert shore of the Figgate muir. The gradual fading of the light amid the mountain solitude that overhung the city, soothed and saddened the Earl, for the spot was wild and lonely; the black eagle and the osprey then built their nests in the craigs of Salisbury; and the red fox and the dun fuimart reared their cubs undisturbed in the valley below.
He felt an agitation and a compunction hitherto unknown, in his bosom; and, as the day faded, he watched its decline with the anxiety of a man who was to die at nightfall.
The shadows ascended from the low places to the higher, rising slowly, surely, broadly, like a transparent tide, on the trunks of the lofty oaks that shaded the city muir, on the slopes of Arthur's Seat and Samson's stony ribs, on St. Giles's diademed tower, and the castle's bannered keep—up, up the Pentlands' sides it crept slowly and silently, the coming night (that night which was never to be forgotten by him), till the last gleam of the west died away on the heath-clad peak of Torduff, the loftiest of that magnificent chain of mountains.
It was gone! the whole hills were sunk in sombre shadow; the evening star began to twinkle above the ruined spire of St. Mary's Kirk, and night and silence stole upon the world together.