Meantime the Queen gazed fixedly on her daughter. What strange alteration had taken place in her beloved child? Those gentle blue eyes, wont to rest so placidly on all they surveyed, now restlessly turned from side to side, and never looked her straight in the face. Her busy fingers plucked nervously at the wet garlands she carried on her arms, and her lips moved ceaselessly, though no audible sound came from them.
"Miranda, my love," said the anxious mother, "how came we hither?" A look of unutterable woe troubled the maiden's face. She drew from her bosom a golden needle, and holding it towards the north, she exclaimed,
"As points the faithful needle to the pole."
Swinging the long slimy sea-weeds around her, she then suddenly gave a shrill laugh, and rushed up the castle hill, followed by Luachan, whose drooping ears and limp tail, seemed to the Queen's excited imagination prophetic of evil.
Stiff and sore in every limb from her unusual exposure, Queen Margaret raised herself from the ground and toiled slowly up the steep ascent.
Ere she reached the crest of the rocks upon which the Castle stood, the King came forth to meet her. In a terrible voice he cried—"What have you done to our child, to my darling Miranda?"
Thoroughly overcome with fatigue and misery, the poor Queen burst into tears, and Murdoch forgetting for the moment all save his wife's uncontrollable emotion, soothed her as best he could, and led her into the Castle hall.
Here she told her husband the strange events of the past night. She related their various adventures after Donald left them on the rock, and now, when too late, she bitterly lamented over her own hasty interference, and her imprudent words. She described how she had only time to perceive a being of noble and majestic mien seated on the previously empty throne. As his eye fell upon her she became unconscious, and could remember nothing more until she found herself on the beach at Raasay in the early morning.
The hours of this melancholy day wore slowly on, but no Eudæmon appeared. At last, towards evening, they forced open the door of his little turret chamber—it was empty. All his books and instruments were gone; everything belonging to him or his mother had disappeared from the Castle. Even the harp itself, beside which so many pleasant evenings had been whiled away, was no longer there.
The only things left, and upon these Miranda flew with eagerness, were the chess-board, the wooden men he had so patiently carved for her, and the box to contain them. For long hours the poor child would sit as in a dream, arranging and re-arranging the motley pieces, softly laughing to herself the while; for her mind was hopelessly gone.