Lady Nithsdale assisted her lord in all his arrangements, listened to all his instructions: it was indeed fitting she should do so. The time was past when the wife needed only to be the gentle housewife, the graceful hostess, the dignified countess. Her husband knew well the enduring courage, the calm resolution, which were latent in the soul of his wife; and in her he reposed entire confidence, on her he placed implicit reliance. But she herself was not aware of the qualities which slumbered within her; qualities which, had her life been passed in the common routine of polished existence, would never have been awakened and called into action. She trembled as she heard her lord give the directions which he deemed necessary for the security of the castle; and she shrank instinctively when she saw him gird on his sword, and prepare the pistols which he carried in his holster. Such precautions, although not unusual in these times, struck her as the real actual commencement of war,--of civil war; and an icy chill ran through her veins when she heard the balls rattle down the iron barrels of the pistols. The shades of evening had now gathered around: the four domestics who were to attend their lord were ready mounted in the court-yard; his own stout horse was there, bridled and saddled. Lord Nithsdale, with a firm and stately step, traversed the dimly lighted apartments. The time for doubt or hesitation was past. There was sadness, but no wavering in his eye. His wife was on his arm, but she pressed it lightly; she dared not cling to him as her heart would have prompted her to do, neither durst he unman himself by giving way to the tenderness he felt. When he reached the door, he paused for a moment; and turning back, he looked slowly round the hall, where hung the portraits of his forefathers, the battle-axe of Eugene Maxwell, the helmet of Lord Eustace, the banner of good Earl Robert. His eye rested for a moment on the family motto, "Reviresco." "Not here, my love, not in these ancient halls, will the Earls of Nithsdale flourish again!" and gently pressing both the cold trembling hands of his wife between his own, he descended the steps, and, mounting his horse, he rode resolutely from out the castle gate. It was a glorious summer night. Lord Nithsdale felt, painfully felt to his heart's core, the beauty of the scene, as he traversed the valley from which he took his title, and the lands endeared to him by early recollections, as well as by that consciousness of possession, which assuredly has for the mind of man a charm almost magic in its influence. The moonbeams slept calmly on the towers of Terreagles,--of his home! and they sparkled on the waters of the Nith as it bounded through the smiling vale with its green sheep-walks and its wild copses.