He was the last Comyn of the house of Badenoch, and was, moreover, the last of his race--a race which Scotland well could spare. Lady Gwendoleyne never spoke after she was borne into the castle with the dead body of her son. She lived for five years a close captive in that yellow chamber, and during those terrible five years a word, even of prayer, never passed her lips; but a period was put to her sufferings, for this proud and resentful beauty died on the 10th day of February, 1310, at the hour of three in the afternoon, the anniversary of the very moment in which her husband died under the three daggers in the Minorite Church of Dumfries. She was buried before the Shrine of St. Ninian, with all the grandeur of a princess and all the splendour of the Roman ritual; her son slept by her side, and Sir Alexander of Cavers reared a stately monument above them; but that fierce woman's restless spirit is still said to haunt the Castle of Kirkintulloch and the Roman ruins at the west end of the town; for it is supposed that she will never find repose or peace until the day of doom. ---------- Such was the story told to the captain by the castellan of the old fortress of Kirkintulloch, scarcely one stone of which now stands upon another, as it was removed about the beginning of the present century. "And Yolande Gifford--what of her?" asked the captain. "She did not die of love or grief either, but lived to be a very old woman, and passed away in about her eightieth year, when Robert III. was King, a prioress of the Bernardine nuns of St. Mary--a convent of which you may still see the ruins on the north bank of the Avon, about a mile above Linlithgow Bridge." "A melancholy story!" said the captain; "what a devil of a wife that Gwendoleyne must have been--but no better than such an infamous traitor as Comyn deserved!" "Beware ye, sir," said the castle bailie, lowering his voice, and looking furtively round him; "she is said to walk about--ay, at this very hour, and may pay you a visit that you may never get the better of." "I'll be hanged, bailie, if I go up-stairs to-night--or this morning, rather," said my grandfather, laughing; "I would rather face the Dons at the Moro again, than meet that dame in black velvet with her devil of a dwarf--so make a fresh browst and stir up the fire." The clock struck four. "Four!" said the soldier; "four already; and we march in an hour!"