On MacKim requiring material, each of the principal burghers of Kirkcudbright contributed a _gaud_ or bar of iron, in their anxiety to serve the king, and to have the death of Sir Thomas MacLellan more fully avenged. As a reward for this contribution, King James made the town a royal burgh, and in memory of it, his gallant grandson, on the 26th of February, 1509, granted the old castle of the MacLellans as a free gift to the corporation. At a place named the Buchancroft, a rude but extensive forge was soon erected, and there, stripped to their leathern girdles, the brawny MacKim and his seven sturdy sons, like Vulcan and the Cyclops, plied and swung their ponderous hammers on great resounding anvils, while welding the vast hoops and forming the long bars that were to compose the great cannon which was to demolish the famous stronghold of Thrave. Seven days and seven nights these muscular smiths worked almost without cessation, and the lurid glow of their great forge was nightly seen from the doomed fortress to redden the sky above, the waters of the Dee below, and the tented camp of the besieging army; and only a few years ago, when the new road was made past Carlinwark, a vast mound of cinders and ashes, which formed the _débris_ of their work, was discovered and cleared away. Meanwhile, a band of artificers, with hammer and chisel, were fashioning the balls, which were quarried on the summit of the Binnan hill; these when finished were permitted to roll thundering to its base; and it is remarkable that the great stone-shot for this gun, which yet remain in the castle of Edinburgh, are of Galloway granite from the same eminence. At last the vast bombarde or cannon was complete in all its bars, hoops, and rivets; it weighed six tons and a half, exclusive of the carriage, and measured two feet diameter in the bore. During its formation, Sir Patrick Gray endured an mount of mental torture and anxiety which temporary inaction rendered greater. Would Achanna dare to put in execution the terrible order of the ferocious earl? Would her sister, unrelenting as she was, permit it? He feared that the deed might be done when the castle surrendered, and his feverish and active imagination pictured the gentle, timid, and delicate Murielle writhing in the grasp of an assassin. But if some dark deed had not been _already_ done, why did Achanna place his drawn sword across the mouth of the page, who was about to speak of Murielle, during the parley at the portcullis. Had knighthood and common humanity fallen so low among those outlaws, that her life would be no longer safe in her sister's household; or were the last words of the dying earl a falsehood, merely meant to sting and embitter the soul of one whom he hated with a tiger's hatred? Gray afflicted himself with thoughts and surmises such as these, and while the siege was pressed by the king and his troops, his days and nights were passed in misery.