The lofty Ochils bright did glow,
    Though sleepin’ was the sun;
  But mornin’s light did sadly show
    What ragin’ flames had done! 
  Oh, mirk, mirk was the misty cloud
    That hung o’er thy wild wood! 
  Thou wert like beauty in a shroud,
    And all was solitude.

A volume, indeed, could be written upon the history, traditions, and superstitions of Glencardine Castle, a subject in which its blind owner took the keenest possible interest.  But, tragedy of it all, he had never seen the lovely old domain he had acquired!  Only by Gabrielle’s descriptions of it, as she led him so often across the woods, down by the babbling burn, or over the great ivy-covered ruins, did he know and love it.

Every shepherd of the Ochils knows of the Lady of Glencardine who, on rare occasions, had been seen dressed in green flitting before the modern mansion, and who was said to be the spectre of the young Lady Jane Glencardine, who in 1710 was foully drowned in the Earn by her jealous lover, the Lord of Glamis, and whose body was never recovered.  Her appearance always boded ill-fortune to the family in residence.

Glencardine was scarcely ever without guests.  Lady Heyburn, a shallow and vain woman many years younger than her husband, was always surrounded by her own friends.  She hated the country, and more especially what she declared to be the “deadly dullness” of her Perthshire home.  That moment was no exception.  There were half-a-dozen guests staying in the house, but neither Gabrielle nor her father took the slightest interest in any of them.  They had been, of course, invited to the ball at Connachan, and at dinner had expressed surprise when their host’s pretty daughter, the belle of the county, had declared that she was not going.

“Oh, Gabrielle is really such a wayward child!” declared her ladyship to old Colonel Burton at her side.  “If she has decided not to go, no power on earth will persuade her.”

“I’m not feeling at all well, mother,” the girl responded from the farther end of the table.  “You’ll make nice excuses for me, won’t you?”

“I think it’s simply ridiculous!” declared the Baronet’s wife.  “Your first season, too!”

Gabrielle glanced round the table, coloured slightly, but said nothing.  The guests knew too well that in the Glencardine household there had always been, and always would be, slightly strained relations between her ladyship and her stepdaughter.

For an hour after dinner all was bustle and excitement; then, in the covered wagonette, the gay party drove away, while Gabrielle, standing at the door, shouted after them a merry adieu.

It was a bright, clear, moonlit night, so beautiful indeed that, twisting a shawl about her shoulders, she went to her father’s den, where he usually smoked alone, and, taking his arm, led him out for a walk into the park over that gravelled drive where, upon such nights as that, ’twas said that the unfortunate Lady Jane could be seen.