The moon had waned, and not a star was visible in the dark November sky, as he and MacLellan proceeded through the gloomy city towards the fortress. "A moonless night, but a fine one," said Gray, wrapping his velvet cloak about him. "For shooting bats or owls," added MacLellan, as he stumbled over the rough and unpaved street. "Ay, and a night to try men's mettle if there be witches abroad." "Soho!" said Gray, gaily; "we have left the most perilous witches behind us, with old Abbot John, of Tongland; but assuredly one is safer in a gaberlunzie's canvas gaberdine than a velvet pourpoint to-night, when so many Douglas troopers and Annandale thieves in Johnstone grey are abroad; and the sky is so dark that the devil, were he here, could not see his own tail behind him." Unmolested, however, they reached the castle, where the portcullis was down and all the gates secured; and where the garrison, which was almost entirely composed of the lord chancellor's vassals, kept watch and ward as warily as if a foreign army, and not the Douglases, had been in the sleeping city below. As they entered a man passed out: he was muffled in a cloak, with an iron salade on his head--a species of helmet, which effectually concealed the face, but had a horizontal slit for the eyes. Recognizing the voice of Gray, he rubbed his thin hands together, and smiled maliciously; for this nocturnal rambler was James Achanna, who had just been depositing the four coffins in the vault of David's Tower, and who seemed still to see before him, as the unconscious lover passed gaily into the fortress, a gilt plate inscribed: "_Murielle Douglas, qui obit 23 Novembris, A.D. 1440_." CHAPTER IX. THE TWENTY-THIRD OF NOVEMBER. Now like a maiden-queen she will behold To her high turrets hourly suitors come; The East with incense and the West with gold, Shall stand like suppliants to receive her doom. The silver _Forth_ her own majestic flood Shall bear her vessels like a sweeping train; And often wish, as of their mistress proud, With longing eyes to see her face again. In sunny beauty, the 23rd of November, 1440, dawned on the green hills, the old grey city of the Stuarts, and on the distant sea; and, as the morning advanced, a man, who by his pale and anxious face seemed to have passed a sleepless night, walked slowly to and fro on the paved bartizan of King David's Tower. He was Sir William Crichton of that ilk--the lord chancellor of Scotland--no sinecure office, under James II. The first object on which his keen eyes rested, was the slated roof of the abbot of Tongland's lofty mansion. There pretty Murielle was doubtless still asleep, and dreaming perhaps of her lover.