"She was the wife of the last Comyn to whom this castle belonged, and she was a woman possessing alike the pride and temper of Lucifer; but they cost her dear, for she suffered a sore penance in the yellow bedchamber up-stairs, and there 'tis said her spirit walks to this hour. Now it chanced that in the days of King James IV., his Master Painter, the famous Sir Thomas Galbraith, the pupil of Quentin Matsys, of Antwerp, and the friend of Leonardo da Vinci and of Titian Vecelli, came here during the lifetime of John Lord Fleming--the same who was so barbarously assassinated by the cursed Laird o' Drummelzier, wi' whose folk we have a feud outstanding yet, like an auld debt--well, the King's painter slept, or rather, perhaps, passed the night in the yellow room, and from that time he was a changed man; from being rosy-faced, he became pale and wan, hollow-eyed and ghastly; from being as full of fun and frolic as the King himself, he became sad, woful and thoughtful, and he shut himself up in the haunted-room, where he worked day and night for a whole week, without eating, drinking, or sleeping, as folks aver, until _that_ awful picture was finished; and whether it was done from the memory of _one_ vision of the spirit, or whether the wife of the Red Comyn came to him nightly from hell, and sat for her portrait, I cannot say; but when finished by Sir Thomas Galbraith, it was the last work he did on earth, for he was found dead, seated before it, one morning, with a pallet on his left thumb and a brush in his right hand. Terror was on his dead face, and the marks of strangulation were round his throat; so the Flemings buried him in the auld Kirk of St. Ninian, at the Oxgang, where his grave is yet to be seen. I would fain have the picture burned, but the family set a high value upon it; yet I verily believe, if a puir presumptuous auld carle like me dare judge o' sic things, that its presence here may keep the spirit o' that awfu' woman hovering about the walls o' the auld castle she rendered accursed by her crimes!" "Well, bailie, tell me the story and----" "Mak' another browst o' toddy while the water is hot, sir," replied the castellan, as he stirred up the fire with an enormous poker, and as the flames roared in the tunnel-like chimney, the red sparks flew up in pyramids. "I am charged to the brim," said the captain; "so fire away, my friend, I am all impatience." After a few preliminary hems, coughs, and flourishes, with sips of toddy between, the bailie told the captain the following strange story, which I give in my own words, being vain enough to prefer them to his. -------- In the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Castle of Kirkintulloch was the principal residence of John Comyn Lord of Badenoch, who, as nephew of King John Baliol, was a competitor with Bruce for the crown of Scotland, and he was called the Red Comyn to distinguish him from his father, the Black Comyn, who was so named from his swarthy complexion.