They were Sir Roland Vipont and his two friends, the captain and lieutenant of the King's Foot Guard. CHAPTER XVIII. THE CASTLE OF INCHKEITH. "_Prometheus_. The tyrant is but young in power, and deems His palace inaccessible to sorrow, But bear him this defiance: I have seen Two hated despots hurled from the same throne, And in him I shall soon behold a third, Flung thence to an irreparable ruin. "_Mercury_. It was thy proud rebellion brought thee here, Else thou hadst from calamity been free." Half-an-hour after the earl and Lady Jane had set out for the convent of St. Katherine, old Father St. Bernard departed; and, after failing to convince the countess that her belief in omens and predictions was altogether at variance with the principles of their faith (arguments which she always silenced by reminding him, that he was one of those who had seen the spectre which appeared to James IV. in St. Katherine's aisle at Linlithgow), he departed to his dwelling among the houses of the prebendaries at St. Giles's, and bestowed his solemn and usual benediction--"Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum"--on Janet Seton, the sister of Gilzean, and all the kneeling household, as he departed. The dark-haired Sybil, the fair Marion Logan, and the stately figure of Alison Hume, were all bent over a large embroidery frame, where they pretended to be working (for the old-fashioned industry of the countess kept all busy about her), but in reality they were conversing intently on the late ball at the palace, and all their white necks and glossy ringlets shone in the light of the candelabrum, as they were grouped like the three Graces together. Reclined in an easy chair, with her feet on a tabourette, and her face so buried in her vast coif, that her nose (which was somewhat prominent) alone was visible, the countess was spelling over the pages of "The joyeuse Historie of the great Conqueror and excellent Prince, King Arthur, sometyme King of the noble Realm of England, with the Chivalry of the Round Table." It was one of those old black-letter emanations from William Caxton's press, which the abbot of Westminster erected for him, at the Almonry, in the parish of St. Margaret, London. Her husband, Earl John, found it when storming the English castle of Etal, and had given it to his confessor, as a book of magic; for to the unlettered warrior of the fifteenth century its strange black characters seemed the very work of hell, and he had never touched the volume, save with his gauntlets on.