Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/243

Rh, and stood on its brow, overlooking a fertile plain or strath—an island of verdure amidst the black, precipitous mountains that girded it. The sun was hidden by the western mountains, which cast their shadow into the valley; but the clouds were dispersed, and the round full silvery moon was pacing up the eastern heaven. The plain at their feet was studded by villages, adorned by groves, and threaded by two rivers, whose high, romantic banks varied the scene. An extensive, strongly-built castle stood on the hill that overhung one of the streams, looking proudly down on this strath, which contained nearly thirty-six square miles of fertile ground. "Behold," said James, "the kingdom of Lord Huntley, where he is far more absolute than I in my bonny Edinburgh. The Gordon fought for the Bruce; and the monarch bestowed on him this fair, wide plain as his reward. Bruce flying before his enemies, on foot, almost alone, among these savage Grampians, then looked upon it as now we do."

King James's thoughts were full of that wild exhilaration of spirit, which none, save the inhabitant of a mountainous country, knows, when desolation is around—a desolation which is to him the pledge of freedom and of power. But York had other ideas: lie had been told that the Lady Katherine had yielded a willing consent to the proposal made; and she whom he had before conversed with only as a gentle friend—she, the lovely and the good—his young heart beat thick,—it had no imagery, far less words, expressive of the rapture of love, tortured by the belief that such a prize he ought to—he must—resign.

The petty tyranny of trivial circumstance often has more power over our best-judged designs, than our pride permits us to confess. From the moment York entered Castle Gordon, he found an almost invisible, but all-conquering net thrown over him, The Gordon, for thus the earl of Huntley preferred being called, when surrounded by his clan in his northern fastness, received the princes with barbaric, but extreme magnificence: his dress was resplendent; his followers numerous, and richly clad according to Highland ideas of pomp. But no Lady Katherine was there, and it soon became apparent that Richard was first to see her at the altar. Sounds of nuptial festivity rang through the castle; instead of grace or generosity attending his meditated declining of the honour, it would have borne the guise of an arrogant refusal. There was also something in the savage look of the clansmen, in the rude uncivilization of her native halls, where defence and attack formed the creed and practice of all, that reconciled him to the idea of leading her from the wild north to softer, milder scenes; where every