Presently they retraced their steps to the edge of the wood beyond which lay the house.  They found the path, and there, at her request, he left her.  It was not wise that he should approach the house at that hour, she urged.

So, after a long and fervent leave-taking, he held her in a last embrace, and then, raising his cap, and saying, “Good-night, my darling, my own well-beloved!” he turned away and went at a swinging pace down the farm-road where he had left his car with lights extinguished.

She watched him disappear.  Then, sighing, she turned into the dark, winding path beneath the trees, the end of which came out upon the drive close to the house.

Half-way down, however, with sudden resolve, she took a narrower path to the left, and was soon on the outskirts of the wood and out again in the bright moonlight.

The night was so glorious that she had resolved to stroll alone, to think and devise some plan for the future.  Before her, silhouetted high against the steely sky, rose the two great, black, ivy-clad towers of the ancient castle.  The grim, crumbling walls stood dark and frowning amid the fairy-like scene, while from far below came up the faint rippling of the Ruthven Water.  A great owl flapped lazily from the ivy as she approached those historic old walls which in bygone days had held within them some of Scotland’s greatest men.  She had explored and knew every nook and cranny in those extensive ruins.  With Walter’s assistance, she had once made a perilous ascent to the top of the highest of the two square towers, and had often clambered along the broken walls of the keep or descended into those strange little subterranean chambers, now half-choked with earth and rubbish, which tradition declared were the dungeons in which prisoners in the old days had been put to the rack, seared with red-hot irons, or submitted to other horrible tortures.

Her feet falling noiselessly, she entered the grass-grown courtyard, where stood the ancient spreading yew, the “dule-tree,” under which the Glencardine charters had been signed and justice administered.  Other big trees had sprung from seedlings since the place had fallen into ruin; and, having entered, she paused amidst its weird, impressive silence.  Those high, ponderous walls about her spoke mutely of strength and impregnability.  Those grass-grown mounds hid ruined walls and broken foundations.  What tales of wild lawlessness and reckless bloodshed they all could tell!

Many of the strange stories she had heard concerning the old place—­stories told by the people in the neighbourhood—­were recalled as she stood there gazing wonderingly about her.  Many romantic legends had, indeed, been handed down in Perthshire from generation to generation concerning old Glencardine and its lawless masters, and for her they had always possessed a strange fascination, for had she not inherited the antiquarian tastes of her father, and had she not read many works upon folklore and such-like subjects.