almost on the top, and from an open space beheld nearly the whole
front, could he tell what it was like. It was a grand pile, but
looked a gloomy one to live in.

He stood on a broad grassy platform, from which rose a gravelled
terrace, and from the terrace the castle. He ran his eye along the
front seeking a door but saw none. Ascending the terrace by a broad
flight of steps, he approached a deep recess in the front, where two
portions of the house of differing date nearly met. Inside this
recess he found a rather small door, flush with the wall, thickly
studded and plated with iron, surmounted by the Morven horses carved
in gray stone, and surrounded with several mouldings. Looking for
some means of announcing his presence, he saw a handle at the end of
a rod of iron, and pulled, but heard nothing: the sound of the bell
was smothered in a wilderness of stone walls. By and by, however,
appeared an old servant, bowed and slow, with plentiful hair white
as wool, and a mingled look of childishness and caution in his
wrinkled countenance.

"The earl wants to see me," said Donal.

"What name?" said the man.

"Donal Grant; but his lordship will be nothing the wiser, I suspect;
I don't think he knows my name. Tell him--the young man he sent for
to Andrew Comin's."

The man left him, and Donal began to look about him. The place
where he stood was a mere entry, a cell in huge walls, with a
second, a low, round-headed door, like the entrance to a prison, by