those days were rarely written, and the Knight must have resorted to a
secretary to express his intentions in that manner; besides,
intercourse of all kinds was precarious and unsafe, and no man cared
to give any public intimation of the time and direction of a journey,
since, if his route were publicly known, it was always likely he might
in that case meet with more enemies than friends upon the road. The
precise day, therefore, of Sir Halbert's return, was not fixed, but
that which his lady's fond expectation had calculated upon in her own
mind had long since passed, and hope delayed began to make the heart
sick.

It was upon the evening of a sultry summer's day, when the sun was
half-sunk behind the distant western mountains of Liddesdale, that the
Lady took her solitary walk on the battlements of a range of
buildings, which formed the front of the castle, where a flat roof of
flag-stones presented a broad and convenient promenade. The level
surface of the lake, undisturbed except by the occasional dipping of a
teal-duck, or coot, was gilded with the beams of the setting luminary,
and reflected, as if in a golden mirror, the hills amongst which it
lay embossed. The scene, otherwise so lonely, was occasionally
enlivened by the voices of the children in the village, which,
softened by distance, reached the ear of the Lady, in her solitary
walk, or by the distant call of the herdsman, as he guided his cattle
from the glen in which they had pastured all day, to place them in
greater security for the night, in the immediate vicinity of the
village. The deep lowing of the cows seemed to demand the attendance
of the milk-maidens, who, singing shrilly and merrily, strolled forth,
each with her pail on her head, to attend to the duty of the evening.
The Lady of Avenel looked and listened; the sounds which she heard
reminded her of former days, when her most important employment, as