It was a lovely day in the month of August, and the sun, which had shone with undiminished splendor from the moment of dawn, was now slowly declining, with that rich and prolonged glow with which it seems especially to linger around those scenes where it seldomest finds admittance. For it was a valley in the north of Scotland into which its light was streaming, and many a craggy top and rugged side, rarely seen without their cap of clouds or shroud of mist, were now throwing their mellow-tinted forms, clear and soft, into a lake of unusual stillness. High above the lake, and commanding a full view of that and of the surrounding hills, stood one of those countryfied hotels not unfrequently met with on a tourist's route, formerly only designed for the lonely traveler or weary huntsman, but which now, with the view to accommodate the swarm of visitors which every summer increased, had gone on stretching its cords and enlarging its boundaries, till the original tenement looked merely like the seed from which the rest had sprung. Nor, even under these circumstances, did the house admit of much of the luxury of privacy; for, though the dormitories lay thick and close along the narrow corridor, all accommodation for the day was limited to two large and long rooms, one above the other, which fronted the lake. Of these, the lower one was given up to pedestrian travelers--the sturdy, sunburnt shooters of the moors, who arrive with weary limbs and voracious appetites, and question no accommodation which gives them food and shelter; while the upper one was the resort of ladies and family parties, and was furnished with a low balcony, now covered with a rough awning.