The leader of the gipsies frequented the fairs on the north side of the Frith, well mounted—paying at inns and ferries like a gentleman; and attended by bands of gillies, whose green coats, cudgels, and knives, were sufficiently feared by the tenantry of the Lennox. The gipsy chieftain had also a grim cur of the true black-faced breed, famous for collecting and driving off sheep, and therefore distinguished by his own name. In the darkest cleughs or ravines, or in the deepest snow, this faithful animal had never been known to abandon the flock commited to his care, or to fail in tracing a fugitive. But, as sight and strength began to fail, the four-footed chieftain was deposed, imprisoned in a byre loft, and finally sentenced to be drowned.
In one of those drear midnights so awful to travellers in the Highlands, a man, wrapped in a large coarse plaid, strode from a stone ridge, on the border of Loch Lomond, into a boat which he had drawn from its covert. He rowed resolutely and alone, looking carefully to the right and to the left, till he suffered the tide to bear his little bark into a gorge or gulf, so narrow, deep, and dark, that no escape but death seemed to await him. Precipices, rugged with dwarf shrubs and broken granite, rose more than a hundred feet on each side, sundered only by the stream, which a thirsty season had reduced to a sluggish and shallow pool. The boatman, poising himself erect on his staff, drew three times the end of a strong chain which hung among the underwood. In a few minutes a basket descended from the pinnacle of the cliff; and, having moored his boat, he placed himself in the wicker carriage, and was safely drawn into a crevice high in the fissure of a rock, into which he disappeared.
The boat was moored; but the adventurer had not observed that it contained another passenger. Underneath a plank, laid artfully along its bottom, and shrouded in his plaid of the darkest green, another man had been lurking more than an hour before the owner of the boat entered it, and remained hidden by the darkness of the night.
His purpose was answered. He had now discovered—what he had sacrificed many a perilous night to obtain a knowledge of—the mode by which the owner of the Tower of Gloom gained access to his impregnable fortress unsuspected. He instantly unmoored the boat, and rowed slowly back across the loch to an island near the centre. He rested on its oars, and looked down into the transparent water. "It is there still," he said to himself; and drawing close among the rocks, leaped on dry land. A dog of the true shepherd breed sat waiting under the bushes, and ran before him till they descended together under an archway of stones and withered branches. "Watch the boat," said the Highlander to his faithful guide, who sprang immediately away to obey him. Meanwhile his master lifted up one of the grey stones, took a bundle from beneath it, and equipped himself in such a suit as a trooper of Campbell's regiment usually wore. He then looked at the edge of his dirk, and returned to his boat.
Having thus acquired an accurate knowledge of the secret mode of access to the tower, the stranger returned to the place where he had seen the basket descending for the purpose of conveying its present possessor to the tower; climbing up its rough face with the activity acquired by mountain warfare, he hung among furze and broken rocks like a wild cat, till he found the crevice through which the basket had seemed to issue. It was artfully concealed by tufts of heather; but creeping on his hands and knees, he forced his way into the interior. There the deepest darkness confounded him, till he had laid his hands on a chain which he rightly guessed to be the same he had seen hanging on the side of the lake when Campbell landed. One end was coiled up; but he readily concluded that the end must have some communication with the keep; and he followed its course, till he found it inserted in what seemed a subterraneous wall. A crevice behind the pulley admitted a gleam of light; but, striving to raise himself, he leaned too forcibly on the chain, and he was somewhat startled to hear the sound of a deep-toned bell.
Donald Campbell was sitting alone in the chamber, from the windows of which, fifteen years before, his betrayed friend, Reginald Grahame, had precipitated himself into the lake below. His eyes were fixed on the blazing logs on the hearth. The thoughts of former times were flitting before him: he pondered on the days of his youth, before ambition and avarice had fixed their poisoned arrows in his heart; ere the world had banished those notions of virtue and religion that his excellent parents had, in his boyhood, so unceasingly inculcated. Many minor delinquencies had he committed; but the crime which now preyed upon his mind was the betrayal of his friend, embittered as it was by the reflection of the sordid motive that induced it.
In this state of mind he was startled by one of those figures which fancy so frequently suggests to a disordered mind. In the masses of the burning embers, he traced the outline of a face: imagination lent its aid; and he recognised a resemblance of Reginald. He started up:—"Avaunt, base mockery; am I to be daunted with a mere figment of the brain? Alas! trifles now disturb me. If I have sinned, I have suffered: the loss of my only son has been the penalty. I have paid for my misdeeds." So saying, he sat back on his chair quite exhausted; and at that moment the bell rung. At the deep and hollow sound he cast his eyes fearfully round, but made no attempt to rise, though he stretched his hand towards a staff which lay near him. The stranger saw the tremor of the dismayed Lord of the Tower; and, putting his lips to the crevice, murmured, "Father," in a low and supplicating tone. That word made Campbell tremble. But when the other added, "Father! father! save me," he sprang to the wall, drew back the iron bolts of a narrow door, invisible to any eye but his own, and gave admission to the muffled man, who leaped eagerly in. Years had passed since Campbell had seen his son, and many rumours had been spread that the younger Campbell had not really perished, but had engaged in the service of the Pretender. The hopes and love of the father all revived in one moment; and the sudden apparition—the appeal for mercy—had full effect on his imagination. The voice, eyes, and figure of the stranger resembled his son: all else might and must be changed by the lapse of so many years. He wept like an infant on his shoulder, grasped his hand a hundred times, and forgot to blame him for the rash disloyalty he had shown to his father's cause.
Roderick, in explanation, mentioned a variety of circumstances explanatory of the reasons of his evasion: how he had escaped, after the battle of Culloden, to France, where he had endeavoured to earn a scanty livelihood; and how he had at last resolved to revisit his native land, in hopes of obtaining the forgiveness of his father. His narrative was much abridged, by the fond delight of the old man weeping and rejoicing over the return of his prodigal son.
Old Campbell eagerly asked by what happy chance he had discovered the secret entrance, and whether any present danger threatened him. Roderick answered the first question by repeating what our readers are already acquainted with; and he added, in answer to the second, that he feared nothing but the emissaries of the government, from whom he could not be better concealed than in the Tower of Gloom. Old Campbell agreed with joyful eagerness, but presently added—
"Roderick, my boy, we must trust in Annette: she's too near in kin to betray you; and ye were to have been her spouse."