through a rude, tunnellike passageway, its sides for a distance of one hundred feet or more pierced with many an embrasure for archers or musketeers.  Emerging from this we came into the castle court, the center of the small plateau on the summit of the rock.  Around us rose the broken, straggling walls, bare and bleak, without a shred of ivy or wall-flower to hide their grim nakedness.  The place was typical of a rude, semi-barbarous age, an age of rapine, murder and ferocious cruelty, and its story is as terrific as one would anticipate from its forbidding aspect.  Here it was the wont of robber barons to retire with their prisoners and loot; and later, on account of the inaccessibility, state and political prisoners were confined here from time to time.  In the frightful “Whig’s Vault,” a semi-subterranean dungeon, one hundred and sixty covenanters—­men and women—­were for several months confined by orders of the infamous Claverhouse.  A single tiny window looking out on the desolate ocean furnished the sole light and air for the great cavern, and the story of the suffering of the captives is too dreadful to tell here.  The vault was ankle deep in mire and so crowded were the prisoners that no one could sit without leaning upon another.  In desperation and at great risk, a few attempted to escape from the window, whence they clambered down the precipitous rock; but most of them were re-taken, and after frightful tortures were thrown into a second dungeon underneath the first, where light and air were almost wholly excluded.  Such was Scotland in the reign of Charles Stuart II, and such a story seemed in keeping with the vast, dismal old fortress.

[Illustration:  Dunnottar castle, Stonehaven, near Aberdeen.]

But Dunnottar, secluded and lonely as it was, did not escape the far-reaching arm of the Lord Protector, and in 1562 his cannon, planted on the height opposite the headland, soon brought the garrison to terms.  It was known that the Scottish regalia—­the crown believed to be the identical one worn by Bruce at his coronation, the jewelled scepter and the sword of state presented to James IV by the pope—­had been taken for safety to Dunnottar, held in repute as the most impregnable stronghold in the North.  The English maintained a close blockade by sea and land and were in strong hopes of securing the coveted relics.  The story is that Mrs. Granger, the wife of a minister of a nearby village, who had been allowed by the English to visit the castle, on her departure carried the relics with her, concealed about her clothing.  She passed through the English lines without interference, and the precious articles were safely disposed of by her husband, who buried them under the flagstones in his church at Kinneff, where they remained until the restoration of 1660.  The English were intensely disappointed at the loss.  The minister and his wife did not escape suspicion and were even subjected to torture, but they bravely refused to give information as to the whereabouts of the regalia.