book-lined room, a sigh that ended in a sob.

The old man had leaned his chin upon his hands, and his sightless eyes
were filled with tears. "Is it the truth?" he murmured to himself. "Is
it really the truth?"



CHAPTER II

FROM OUT THE NIGHT

There are few of the Perthshire castles that more plainly declare their
feudal origin and exhibit traces of obsolete power than does the great
gaunt pile of ruins known as Glencardine. Its situation is both
picturesque and imposing, and the stern aspect of the two square
baronial towers which face the south, perched on a sheer precipice that
descends to the Ruthven Water deep below, shows that the castle was once
the residence of a predatory chief in the days before its association
with the great Montrose.

Two miles from the long, straggling village of Auchterarder, in the
centre of a fine, well-wooded, well-kept estate, the great ruined castle
stands a silent monument of warlike days long since forgotten. There,
within those walls, now overgrown with ivy and weeds, and where big
trees grow in the centre of what was once the great paved courtyard,
Montrose schemed and plotted, and, according to tradition, kept certain
of his enemies in the dungeons below.

In the twelfth century the aspect of the deep glen was very different