Next morning, at the early but accustomed hour, he undid the accumulated bolts and locks of the inner doorway (while Dobbie secured the outer), and entered, with breakfast on the trencher. A cry burst from him, and he started back aghast on finding the place void, for one glance sufficed to show that it was empty. The earl was indeed gone! "Ah, the _knife_!" thought Trotter, as he rushed to the window. Every bar was in its place, and the undisturbed cobwebs of years were still woven between them. Not a flag of the floor, not a stone of the wall, appeared to have been displaced; and, terrified by such a phenomenon, Tam Trotter uttered a stentorian howl of dismay, and fled from the empty chamber. CHAPTER XXV. DOUGLASDALE. "But you, dear scenes! that far away Expand beneath these mountains blue, Where fancy sheds a purer ray, And robes the fields in richer hue,-- A softer voice in every gale, I 'mid your woodlands wild should hear; And Death's unbreathing shades would fail To sigh their murmurs in mine ear." LEYDEN. The sun of a morning in June shone brightly upon Douglasdale, as a valley of the middle ward of Lanarkshire is named--the country of the puissant Douglases. The pure air, the bright sunshine, the fresh meadows, the fragrant wind that stole along the uplands, were all indicative of that delightful season when the trees are heavy with their richest foliage, and the voices of the mavis, the merle, and the wood-pigeon are heard within their deep recesses. Under golden masses of the dark green broom, the white hawthorn, and the wild rose, the Douglas water stole, over its pebbled bed, towards the west. Hot and cloudless, the rays of the glorious summer sun poured over the giant summit of the Cairntable, and played along the pastoral glens below, to be reflected by the gleam of arms and the glitter of armour descending from those heights which overlook the towers of the Douglases--the "Castle Dangerous" of chivalry and romance. The lairds and warders of the various towers which overhung the valley, were all on the alert, and had barred their gates, drawn up their bridges, and prepared their armour, with not the less care, because they could perceive the royal standard with the red lion waving above the copsewood below. With their swords sheathed and visors up, Roland Vipont and Louis Leslie rode together at the head of their little column, which had passed a peaceful campaign of nearly three weeks in Lanarkshire, without being molested by any one; and, of course without hearing tidings of the Earl of Ashkirk, for whom, as in duty bound, they made the most minute inquiries--Roland being the more rigid in his search, because he believed him to be in safe concealment at Edinburgh. The horses of the artillery looked sleek and well fed; and the cannoniers, with Leslie's hundred men of the guard, had all their harness and arquebuses as bright as on that day when they marched from Holyrood.