Page:Guy Mannering Vol 3.djvu/36

26 which has not yet taken place! It is even so with me while I gaze upon that ruin; nor can I divest myself of the idea, that these massive towers and that dark gateway, retiring through its deep vaulted and ribbed arches, and dimly lighted by the court-yard beyond, is not entirely strange to me. Can it be that they have been familiar to me in infancy, and that I am to seek in their vicinity those friends of whom my childhood has still a tender though faint remembrance, and whom I early exchanged for such severe task-masters? Yet Brown, who I think would not have deceived me, always told me I was brought off from the eastern coast, after a skirmish in which my father was killed; and I do remember enough of a horrid scene of violence to strengthen his account."

It happened that the spot upon which young Bertram chanced to station himself for the better viewing the castle, was