So the time rolled wearily on.
One afternoon he was sitting dreamily in the recess of a window of St. Margaret's Tower, which stood upon the western verge of the castle rock, but was demolished during the long siege of 1573.
It was a somewhat gloomy apartment (it was then three hundred and eighty years old), built in the Saxon style, with grotesquely-carved heads and zig-zag mouldings round the arches, and hung with long russet-coloured tapestry, which had been worked by the hands of Annabella, the queen of Robert III., to hide the bare, rough walls. This tapestry was old now; its tenter-hooks were rusty, and it swayed in the currents of wind, which passed through the fireplace, on the shelf of which, in memory of the good queen who once dwelt there, was inscribed the pious request,—
Sancta Margarita, ora pro nobis.
Beneath the windows was the verdant slope whereon three mounds, of solemn aspect, were traceable. The coarse dog-grass, the white gowan, and pink witch-thimbles (or foxglove), grew there in rank luxuriance now, and as they swayed in the evening wind, were all that marked where lay the three victims of that terrible vigil of St. Catharine.
The autumnal sun was sinking. The vast and fertile plain of wood and wold which stretches from the foot of the castle rock for fifty miles to the westward, was steeped in warm light; and the sun's diverging rays of ruddy gold, as he sank behind the rugged ridges of Corstorphine, filled all the western sky with a shining glory, which threw forward, in strong, black outline, the intervening woods and rocks, hills and knolls.
Gray's eyes were apparently fixed upon the dark mountains and the beautiful plain, all brightness and fertility; but they dwelt on vacancy, for he saw, instead, a graceful head, with a mass of wavy hair, long-lashed, gentle eyes, of a violet blue, a soft face, with a brilliant complexion, and a slightly rose-tinted cheek.
There was a sound in his ear too.
It was the voice of Murielle, conjured up with all a lover's memory in an age of poetry, romance, and enthusiasm, when knightly faith and purity, and even somewhat of fading chivalry, were lingering in the northern land.