the people of England having been influenced into a belief that by her death their queen had been freed from a most iniquitous foe, who had endeavoured to hurl her from her throne, and usurp her seat on it, condemned promiscuously all her countrymen with herself. Although Elizabeth was the godmother of Rosalind, and she had heard only one side of the ques. tion during the trial of the Scotch queen, still from circumstances which she had singly gathered, but which had rested on her mind, she had been led privately to pity Mary's unfortunate lot, and to believe her, if not innocent, at least less guilty than she had been represented, and most rigorously punished by the privation of life. The dame, although shut for nearly a century within the walls of Rockmount Castle, considered herself by no means a less able politician than those who visited the court; and she now began to descant, with all the fury of bigotry, on the heinousness of Scotch principles, and the universal wickedness which must of necessity be inherent in the Scotch nation, when they had the example of most atrocious crimes set them in the person of their monarch but that she trusted and hoped that the punishment which had overtaken her would lead them all to repentance, and that before they died, they would bless the queen of England as the instrument of their reformation. The narrow-minded principles of the dame were as much beneath the attention of Rosalind, as she considered her arguments too contemptible for reply. Rosalind was a firm adherent of Elizabeth, and bore her that love and respect which the honour she had conferred on her at her birth demanded from her; but still she was not so blind in her affection, as not to be able to distinguish that the most perfect may be liable to single actions, but for the performance of which the fame of their even rectitude would raise them above the level of mortality; and she could not forbear considering the death of Mary as the single shade which dimmed the otherwise unsullied lights of Elizabeth's character. The dame passed the night in intervals of sleep and conversation. Rosalind was content to wear away the hours in passive expectation of the ensuing morn, which at length arose with peculiar serenity and brightness. Rosalind rejoiced at the approach of day, because it enabled her again to look towards the castle, and form some idea whether the threatened attack upon it had yet been made. The dame rejoiced, because the light of day dispelled from her mind her superstitious fears. Rosalind stood at the casement some time before the increasing light enabled her to discern the battlements of the castle, and when she could see them, she discovered no cause to believe that the forces of the freebooter had yet been planted before them; indeed she believed it hardly possible that the attack should be made without various sounds reaching her. The dame endeavoured to persuade her to suffer Zachary to go back to the castle, and make inquiry; but this appeared, in every respect, so openly to be frustrating De Madginecourt's plan for her security, that she would not for an instant admit the idea. "We have no provisions to last us longer than till night," said the dame. "When that hour arrives," said Rosalind, "it will be time enough to think of procuring more; besides, lord Rufus is acquainted with what stock we brought with us, and will doubtless not allow us to remain here in want: much may occur in the course of the next twelve hours." The dame went to breakfast with an appetite that seemed to bespeak her determined not to suffer their stores to last beyond the time she had named, probably from her dread of remaining another night under the same roof with an unburied Scotchman. Rosalind continued standing before the window, her mind occupied alternately by the mysterious occurrence of the preceding night, and the strange uncertainty of her own fate. Her eyes rested on the grandeur of the scene before her, closed in on every side by distant rocks, whose spiral tops were illuminated by the rays of the rising sun, which was creeping slowly above them into an azure firmament, unspotted by a single cloud. At the foot of the mountains, beyond the castle, she descried a broad stream, which wound amongst the trees that clothed their sloping sides, and was then seen falling over the crags of a more perpendicular steep; now it appeared flickering beneath the golden sun beams, now gliding in a silver current under the shadowing foliage of the woods. The solid mass which composed the castle gave a feature of the sublimest kind to the landscape; and the extent of the fortifications, which spread along the plain, appeared the work of centuries, and seemed to frown defiance on the attempts of an enemy to invade them. As her eye drew nearer home, the ground sparkled beneath the dew-drops gemmed by the sun; and the song of the skylark, flying in circles round the spot where its nest lay concealed, gave a momentary glow to her spirits. About two hours after sunrise, as her eyes were stretched out towards the mountains, she perceived a moving body descending from the summit of one of them, on which the light of the sun rested with peculiar brightness, and she concluded that it must be a body of troops, whose arms glittered beneath the reflection of its beams. She called upon Zachary to assist her conjecture, and he confirmed the one she had already drawn. Those then, Rosalind concluded, were the troops of Allanrod, advancing to their attack upon Rockmount Castle. She inquired of Zachary at the distance of how many hours' march they were from it? and he replied, that they were a good way off, although they seemed so near; for at the foot of the mountain they were now crossing, there ran a river, over which there was no bridge, and which was not fordable in that part: thus on reaching the foot of the mountain, they must turn to the left, away |