Avoiding the town of Dumfries, he followed the banks of the stream, till he found himself under the very walls of his own far-famed Castle of Caerlaverock. It was with a pardonable feeling of pride that the fifth Earl of Nithsdale surveyed, for the last time, the noble edifice which had been the seat of his ancestors for nearly seven hundred years, and which they had rendered famous by many an act of prowess. The two circular towers which flanked the northern entrance stood out, bold and dark, against the deep blue of the moonlight sky; the rippling waves were tipped with silver as they broke against the walls of the castle, which, built in a triangular form on the point of land where the Nith throws itself into the Irish Sea, rose on two sides abruptly from the waters. But though he might cast towards the ruined walls a glance of regret, and might bid them in his heart a long and sad adieu, he reminded himself that the Lord Eustace had in his zeal for King Robert Bruce demolished the ancient fortifications of this same castle, lest the English might garrison it themselves; and he thought of Robert, the eighth Lord Maxwell, and first Earl of Nithsdale, who had so gallantly defended it for his unfortunate master Charles the First: and in the glorious recollections of former deeds of loyalty, and in resolutions to emulate such deeds, he attempted to drown the sad anticipations which crowded on his soul. But he was alone! No eye was upon him! No enthusiastic Jacobite was by his side, before whom he might blush to own a thought which had reference to self. Each step, as he advanced, was full of the memorials of his ancestors. He passed the Tower of Repentance,--a monument of the ostentatious remorse of John Lord Herries. In the distance he saw the Castle of Hadham, which came into his family by the marriage of Sir John Maxwell to Agnes, heiress of the Lord Herries of Terreagles. "And the time will come," he thought, "when the Maxwells will be forgotten in a country where they have been known and where they have been honoured, where they have been feared and where they have been loved, for so many centuries! But if remembered, their name shall never be coupled with dishonour, with treachery, or with disloyalty:" and he spurred his gallant horse, hastening from scenes which, while they confirmed him in his devotion to the cause he had espoused, made him feel the extent of the sacrifice he was making. Intelligence little calculated to raise the spirits of the Jacobites awaited him upon his arrival at Dilstone Castle, the seat of the Earl of Derwentwater. He there found the earl and all his adherents in the utmost consternation at the death of Louis the Fourteenth, and the refusal of the Regent to assist the Chevalier with arms, men, or money, or to do anything which might be considered an infraction of the treaty of Utrecht.