'Listen. She was more than lovely, for I, who have seen her, know all this: and know that she possessed the _thirty_ points of feminine beauty which Brantome declares we shall never meet with in one woman. But though she had the dark Douglas' eyes and their black brows, she was feeble, gentle, and timid in spirit: so her father, knowing the daring and pride of Tushielaw, shut her up in his strong castle of Neidpath. There she was beyond the reach of the moss-trooping Scotts, whose hero, Adam, became involved in some vile border brawl or plot against the government; and with the servile Lords of Council at Edinburgh, when a personage styling himself William Earl of March, Lord Douglas of Neidpath, Lyne, and Manorheid, opposed himself to simple Adam Scott, of Tushielaw, proscription and banishment were sure to follow; so our Border chieftain sailed to France, and took service in our Scottish Guard. 'In his absence I need scarcely relate to you how Isabel Douglas, still shut up in the gloomy tower of Neidpath, pined; how the brilliance of her beauty faded; how her eyes lost their lustre, and her lips their enchanting bloom; and how she repeated, ever and anon, the ominous legend inscribed on her betrothal ring. No amusement roused her from the apathy and consumption into which she seemed to be fast hurrying. My lord of March, when he beheld Isabel, on his return from a year's absence in London, was pleased to be mightily shocked and repentant. He removed her to his livelier mansion in the busy little burgh of Peebles, and endeavoured, but in vain, to lead her from her own thoughts and the secret sorrow that preyed upon her; till, finding that every means failed, he at last consented to bring home Tushielaw, and wrote to Acheson, the Secretary of State at Edinburgh, who, by one dash of his pen, restored the estates of Scott, but failed to cure the worm that preyed upon the heart of the poor girl whom that year of sorrow in Neidpath Peel had destroyed. '"He will never return to me, father," said she, and showed the Earl the legend on her ring, while her tears fell fast, for she had long been confined to bed, and was so weak and feeble that the heart of the old Earl was wrung on beholding the mischief he had wrought. At last there came tidings that Tushielaw had sailed from France, that he had landed in Scotland, and the day on which he was to pass through Peebles on his way to the forest was known. 'On that day there was an unusual bustle and commotion visible in and about the old castellated mansion of the Earl of March, which is sufficiently remarkable in the town by its curious turret that overhangs the street.