An hour or two thus went by; but Gowrie would not keep her long from repose, for he longed to go forth with her on the following morning, and roam through the valleys, and over the hills, now covered with the yellow broom and the young shoots of the heath. The weather had become bright and warm. The fair season was coming on with rapid strides, when the mountains are softened and decorated by the hand of nature, and their solemn gloom cheered by the smiles of the sky; and Gowrie thought of many a plan to make the hours pass pleasantly. "While here," he said to himself, "the feeling of security will spread a calm and tranquil atmosphere around us, which we could not obtain in a less wild and solitary spot. To-morrow, I will take my dear prisoner forth, and show her some of the beauties of the land to which she is yet a stranger." At an early hour, therefore, he bade Julia adieu for the night, and retired to the room which he had ordered to be prepared for himself in the gate tower. There he held a somewhat long conversation with Donald Macduff, his baron bailie in Strathbraan; and having ascertained from him that all strangers had withdrawn from the neighbourhood, and that a keen watch had been kept up ever since Austin Jute's capture, lest any of the king's people should be lurking about in the valleys around, he lay down to rest, and slept more soundly than he had done for many a night before. CHAPTER XXXVII. In a room of no very great dimensions in the fair town of Perth, were collected a number of persons upon a solemn and serious occasion. A number of the officers and magistrates of the town were present, seated on a little sort of platform raised above the rest of the room. On either side were drawn up the various officers of a municipal court of justice, as they existed at that time, although I am unable to give their designations; and towards the door were seen two or three halbardiers, with their imposing but clumsy-looking weapons over their shoulders, and dresses of the reign of James V. In a large arm-chair, in the midst of the magistrates of the town, was seated the Earl of Gowrie, as provost of Perth and heritable sheriff of the county; and at a little distance from him, on the same raised place of honour, appeared Sir George Ramsay, habited in the ordinary costume of the court. Across the front of the dais was stretched a long narrow table, at which were seated two or three men in dark garments, with pen and ink and paper before them, and at the opposite end of the room, with a fretted and gilt barrier of iron about three feet high in front, appeared the prisoner, David Drummond, with a stout jailor on either side. His strong and muscular frame appeared to have suffered little, if at all, by the confinement he had endured; but his dull and sinister-looking face was now as pale as ashes, for the earl had just pronounced upon him that doom of death which he himself had twice inflicted upon others.