At the completion of the banquet, the minstrel strung his ancient harp, and soon the company tripped lightly on the oaken floor, till the rafters rang with the merry sounds of their midnight revelry.  For three days and nights the hunt and the feast continued, and as, at last, the revelries drew to a close, still four dark chieftains remained in the inner chamber of the castle, “and sang, and drank, and shouted, right merrilie.  The day broke, yet louder rang the wassail roar; the goblets were over and over again replenished, and the terrible oaths and ribald songs continued, and the dice rattled, and the revelry became louder still, till the many walls of the old castle shook and reverberated with the awful sounds of debauchery, blasphemy, and crime.”

“At length their wild, ungovernable frenzy reached its climax.  They had drunk until their eyes had grown dim, and their hands could scarcely hold the hellish dice, when, driven by expiring fury, with fiendish glee, they defiantly gnashed their teeth and cursed the God of heaven!  Then, with returning strength, and exhausting its last and fitful energies in still louder imprecations and more fearful yells, they deliberately and with unanimous voice consigned their guilty souls to the nethermost hell!  Fatal words!  In a bright, broad sheet of lurid and sulphurous flame the Prince of Darkness appeared in their midst, and struck—­not the shaft of death, but the vitality of eternal life—­and there to this day in that dreaded room they sit, transfixed in all their hideous expression of ghastly terror and dismay—­doomed to drink the wine cup and throw the dice till the dawning of the Great Judgment Day."[21]

Another explanation of the mystery is that during one of the feuds between the Lindsays and the Ogilvies, a number of the latter Clan, flying from their enemies, came to Glamis Castle, and begged hospitality of the owner.  He admitted them, and on the plea of hiding them, he secured them all in this room, and then left them to starve.  Their bones, it is averred, lie there to this day, the sight of which, it has been stated, so appalled the late Lord Strathmore on entering the room, that he had it walled up.  Some assert that, owing to some hereditary curse, like those described in a previous chapter, at certain intervals a kind of vampire is born into the family of the Strathmore Lyons, and that as no one would like to destroy this monstrosity, it is kept concealed till its term of life is run.  But, whatever the mystery may be, such rooms, like the locked chamber of Blue Beard, are not open to vulgar gaze, a circumstance which has naturally perpetuated the curiosity attached to them.  The reputation, too, which Glamis Castle has long had for possessing so strange a room has led to a host of the most gruesome stories being circulated in connection with it, many of which from time to time have appeared in print.  According to one account,[22] “a lady, very well known in London