"But think no more of him, I command you, for he is better as he is, dead, than living to be the rival of Robert, duke of Albany." "Do not tell me, sister, that he was slain," said Murielle, in an imploring voice, while, her tears again fell fast; "he is not dead. I know that he is _not_ dead!" "You _know_?" said Margaret, changing colour. "Yes." "Indeed--how?" "Because I am living still!" replied Murielle, with divine confidence and hope. CHAPTER XIX. A FEUDAL LORD. And joy is mine When the strong castles besieged shake, And walls uprooted, totter and quake, And I see the foemen join, On the moated shore all compass'd round With palisade and guarded mound. LAYS OF THE MINNESINGERS. The result of this conversation, the wild and daring schemes of ambition and revenge it unfolded,--schemes of which she was to be made the tool and the victim, filled Murielle with alarm, and made her more than ever resolve to seek refuge in a convent; but an escape from the guarded castle of Thrave was not a matter to be easily accomplished, as its garrison, formed of the earl's most faithful "retainers, was (as we are told in the third of volume of 'Caledonia'), never less than _one thousand armed men_." A recent writer says, "in Scotland, but a hundred years ago, the head of a family was paramount, and household discipline was wielded without mercy." If such was the case a hundred years ago, it was exercised with greater rigour in the days of the second James. So poor little Murielle found Thrave with all its splendour, a veritable prison, and the earl, her brother-in-law, a haughty and exacting tyrant. Thrave, his greatest stronghold, was built upon an island of twenty acres in extent, formed by the rough and rapid Dee, situated about ten miles above its estuary, and thirty from its source, which is among the wooded hills of Minnigaff. There on that islet the crusader Alan IV., lord of Galloway and constable of Scotland, had a fortress, and thereon, in after times, the Black Knight of Liddesdale, the comrade of Wallace and Bruce, reared the present castle of Thrave, a vast pile, the donjon of which is yet seventy feet in height, with walls eight feet in thickness, built of common stone from the adjacent moors. The first story of this great pile consisted of the larder, the arsenals, and the dungeon, where many a chained wretch has wept during the hours that intervened between time and eternity. In the second story were the apartments of the men-at-arms, the warders, grooms, and pages.