the body. He had got his death-wound, and knew it; but he came of a race
that ever died hard and dangerously; he only ground his teeth, and,
turning short in his saddle, cut the last assailant down. Look at the
helmet, with the clean, even gap in it, cloven down to the
cheek-strap--the stout old Laird of Colonsay struck no fairer blow.

It was curious to mark how the same expression of sternness and decision
about the lips and lower part of the face, which was so remarkable in
their descendants, ran through the long row of ancestral portraits. You
saw it--now, beneath the half-raised visor of Sir Malise, surnamed
_Poing-de-fer_, who went up the breach at Ascalon shoulder to shoulder
with strong King Richard--now, yet more grimly shadowed forth, under the
cowl of Prior Bernard, the ambitious ascetic, whom, they say, the great
Earl of Warwick trusted as his own right hand--now, softened a little,
but still distinctly visible, under the long love-locks of Prince
Rupert's aid-de-camp, who died at Naseby manfully in his harness--now,
contrasting strangely with the elaborately powdered peruke and delicate
lace ruffles of Beau Livingstone, the gallant, with the whitest hand,
the softest voice, the neatest knack at a sonnet, and the deadliest
rapier at the court of good Queen Anne. Nay, you could trace it in the
features of many a fair Edith and Alice, half counteracting the magnetic
attraction of their melting eyes.

On the sunny south side, looking across the flower-garden, were Lady
Catharine Livingstone's rooms, where, diligent as Matilda and her
maidens, in summer by the window, in winter by the fire; the pale
châtelaine sat over her embroidery. What rivers of tapestry must have
flowed from under those slender white fingers during their ceaseless
toil of twenty years!