Balcairnie sought to cheer Peggy by claiming the snow as a good omen; she was ‘ganging a white gate,’ which, as everybody knew, boded high prosperity to a bride. But, in spite of themselves, another and very different picture arose in their minds. It was that which in song and legend has formed the burden of many a local tragedy. The scene is familiar to all when the betrayed and ruined woman wanders in her despair to her cruel lover’s door, while the ‘whuddering blast’ pierces her to the marrow, and the deadly white and chill snow threatens to prove her winding-sheet. She knocks, and implores piteously in vain for admission and shelter. ‘Oh, ope, Lord Gregory, ope the door!’ cries the sobbing, wailing voice, fast sinking into everlasting silence. Balcairnie and Peggy were now riding down the avenue of firs, sombre in the height of summer, with their black canopies blacker than ever under their powdering of white, while the bare stems were ‘swirled’ by the wind in the wildest, dreariest manner. The ruin of the old tower was faintly visible. Shaken as it was, with its loose stones rattling in the hurlyburly, it seemed as if it might fall and crush Peggy in punishment of her heinous sin against the ancient dignity of Drumsheugh, and her audacious intrusion within its precincts. The front of the house was lit up with lights stationary in ordinarily obscured windows, or flitting up and down staircases, showing that something out of the common had happened, and that the whole household was roused and restless. At the moment when the clatter of Balcairnie’s horse’s hoofs might be heard, the hall-door was suddenly thrown open, showing what, by contrast with the darkness without, looked a blaze of light within. A group of servants was in the glare, but still more prominently in front of them stood the Lady in her black mode gown, tippet, and mittens, with her lace lappets fluttering in the night-wind as they framed a high-nosed, high-browed face--the face of a born ruler. Peggy set her teeth to keep back a scream of dismay, while Balcairnie lept down quickly and lifted his companion, ready to fall in a heap on the ground, from his horse. Was the Lady come out to kill her on the spot by telling her Drumsheugh was gone, and there was no longer a place for his poor Peggy in the house that had ceased with his passing breath to be his dwelling? When it came to that, Peggy thought in her despair, there was no place for her on the face of that earth where her young lover walked no longer.