As speaking these words, he directed his horse’s head towards a narrow causeway, the ancient approach to Wolf’s Crag, of which it might be truly said, in the words of the Bard of Hope, that
Frequented by few was the grass-cover’d road,
Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode,
To his hills that encircle the sea.
But, ere he could disengage himself from his companion, the young lady we have already mentioned came up to join the stranger, followed by her servants.
“Daughter,” said the stranger to the unmasked damsel, “this is the Master of Ravenswood.”
It would have been natural that the gentleman should have replied to this introduction; but there was something in the graceful form and retiring modesty of the female to whom he was thus presented, which not only prevented him from inquiring to whom, and by whom, the annunciation had been made, but which even for the time struck him absolutely mute. At this moment the cloud which had long lowered above the height on which Wolf’s Crag is situated, and which now, as it advanced, spread itself in darker and denser folds both over land and sea, hiding the distant objects and obscuring those which were nearer, turning the sea to a leaden complexion and the heath to a darker brown, began now, by one or two distant peals, to announce the thunders with which it was fraught; while two flashes of lightning, following each other very closely, showed in the distance the grey turrets of Wolf’s Crag, and, more nearly, the rollowing billows of the ocean, crested suddenly with red and dazzling light.
The horse of the fair huntress showed symptoms of impatience and restiveness, and it became impossible for Ravenswood, as a man or a gentleman, to leave her abruptly to the care of an aged father or her menial attendants. He was, or believed himself, obliged in courtesy to take hold of her bridle, and assist her in managing the unruly animal. While he was thus engaged, the old gentleman observed that the storm seemed to increase; that they were far from Lord Bittlebrains’s, whose guests they were for the present; and that he would be obliged to the Master of Ravenswood to point him the way to the nearest place of refuge from the storm. At the same time he cast a wistful and embarrassed look towards the Tower of Wolf’s Crag, which seemed to render it almost impossible for the owner to avoid offering an old man and a lady, in such an emergency, the temporary use of his house. Indeed, the condition of the young huntress made this courtesy indispensable; for, in the course of the services which he rendered, he could not but perceive that she trembled much, and was extremely agitated, from her apprehensions, doubtless, of the coming storm.
I know not if the Master of Ravenswood shared her terrors, but he was not entirely free from something like a similar disorder of nerves, as he observed, “The Tower of Wolf’s Crag has nothing to offer beyond the shelter of its roof, but if that can be acceptable at such a moment——” he paused, as if the rest of the invitation stuck in his throat. But the old gentleman, his self-constituted companion, did not allow him to recede from the invitation, which he had rather suffered to be implied than directly expressed.
“The storm,” said the stranger, “must be an apology for waiving ceremony; his daughter’s health was weak, she had suffered much from a recent alarm; he trusted their intrusion on the Master of Ravenswood’s hospitality would not be altogether unpardonable in the circumstances of the case: his child’s safety must be dearer to him than ceremony.”
There was no room to retreat. The Master of Ravenswood led the way, continuing to keep hold of the lady’s bridle to prevent her horse from starting at some unexpected explosion of thunder. He was not so bewildered in his own hurried reflections but that he remarked, that the deadly paleness which had occupied her neck and temples, and such of her features as the riding-mask left exposed, gave place to a deep and rosy suffusion; and he felt with embarrassment that a flush was by tacit sympathy excited in his own cheeks. The stranger, with watchfulness which he disguised under apprehensions of the safety of his daughter, continued to observe the expression of the Master’s countenance as they ascended the hill to Wolf’s Crag. When they stood in front of that ancient fortress, Ravenswood’s emotions were of a very complicated description; and as he led the way into the rude courtyard, and hallooed to Caleb to give attendance, there was a tone of sternness, almost of fierceness, which seemed somewhat alien from the courtesies of one who is receiving honoured guests.
Caleb came; and not the paleness of the fair stranger at the first approach of the thunder, nor the paleness of any other person, in any other circumstances whatever, equalled that which overcame the thin cheeks of the disconsolate seneschal when he beheld this accession of guests to the castle, and reflected that the dinner hour was fast approaching. “Is he daft?” he muttered to himself;—“is he clean daft a’thegither, to bring lords and leddies, and a host of folk behint them, and twal o’clock chappit?” Then approaching the Master, he craved pardon for having permitted the rest of his people to go out to see the hunt, observing, that “They wad never think of his lordship coming back till mirk night, and that he dreaded they might play the truant.”