fir bent and rocked in their craggy cradles, and the wind moaned through their dark branches sadly and painfully.  The sun had, indeed, shone fitfully through the day, but still the scene was one of melancholy desolation, and the heart of the Countess of Buchan, bold and firm in general, could not successfully resist the influence of Nature’s sadness.  She sat comparatively alone; a covering had, indeed, been thrown over some thick poles, which interwove with brushwood, and with a seat and couch of heather, which was still in flower, formed a rude tent, and was destined for her repose; but until night’s dark mantle was fully unfurled, she had preferred the natural seat of a jutting crag, sheltered from the wind by an overhanging rock and some spreading firs.  Her companions were scattered in different directions in search of food, as was their wont.  Some ten or fifteen men had been left with her, and they were dispersed about the mountain collecting firewood, and a supply of heath and moss for the night encampment; within hail, indeed, but scarcely within sight, for the space where the countess sate commanded little more than protruding crags and stunted trees, and mountains lifting their dark, bare brows to the starless sky.

It was not fear which had usurped dominion in the Lady Isabella’s heart, it was that heavy, sluggish, indefinable weight which sometimes clogs the spirit we know not wherefore, until some event following quick upon it forces us, even against our will, to believe it the overhanging shadow of the future which had darkened the present.  She was sad, very sad, yet she could not, as was ever her custom, bring that sadness to judgment, and impartially examining and determining its cause, remove it if possible, or banish it resolutely from her thoughts.

An impulse indefinable, yet impossible to be resisted, had caused her to intrust her Agnes to the care of Lady Mary and Nigel, and compelled her to follow her son, who had been the chosen companion of the king.  Rigidly, sternly, she had questioned her own heart as to the motives of this decision.  It was nothing new her accompanying her son, for she had invariably done so; but it was something unusual her being separated from the queen, and though her heart told her that her motives were so upright, so pure, they could have borne the sternest scrutiny, there was naught which the most rigid mentor could condemn, yet a feeling that evil would come of this was amongst the many others which weighed on her heart.  She could not tell wherefore, yet she wished it had been otherwise, wished the honor of being selected as the king’s companion had fallen on other than her son, for separate herself from him she could not.  One cause of this despondency might have been traced to the natural sinking of the spirit when it finds itself alone, with time for its own fancies, after a long period of exertion, and that mental excitement which, unseen to all outward observers, preys upon itself.  Memory had awakened