The third contained the apartments of the baron, his family, their guests, and the ladies' bower-chamber, with one apartment long secluded, that in which Archibald, earl of Douglas and lord of Galloway,--he whose second son won by his valour the titles of duke of Spruce and prince of Dantzig, died on the 3rd of February, 1400. Small Gothic windows gave light to these upper chambers, and narrow slits and loopholes to the lower. A square barbican and four round flanking towers, with a deep fosse and drawbridge, formed the external barrier. After passing these, the only entrance to the keep was by a door placed so high in the wall that it opened on the _second_ floor, and this strange mode of access was farther secured by a small portcullis, grooved into the solid stone, the work of "the Brawny MacKim," the hereditary smith of the family. To victual this stronghold each of the twenty-eight parishes which form the stewardry of Kirkcudbright had to contribute a _Lardner-mart-cow_ at Martinmas, for winter provisions; and the last attempt to levy these twenty-eight cattle was made in 1747, by William Maxwell, of Nithsdale. In the front wall of the great tower, and immediately above the gateway, which bore all the armorial achievements of the proud and lordly owners, there still projects a large granite block, named the _gallows knob_, or hanging-stone, which, in the olden time, was seldom without its _tassel_, as the moss-troopers phrased it. "Lest this barbarous emblem of feudal power should be minus its usual decoration," says a local historian, "when putrefaction became offensive before the corpse was cut down, if a malefactor was not in custody to be tucked up, it was replenished by some unoffending vassal. The charnel into which these victims were thrown is to this day named the 'gallows slot,' and notwithstanding the time that has elapsed since the downfall of the house of Douglas in Galloway, human bones in abundance were turned up when the present highway was made through it there in the year 1800." Such was the grim feudal dwelling where now Murielle Douglas found herself an inmate,--almost a prisoner,--foredoomed to be the tool, perhaps the victim, of the dark plots and of the ambition and pride of its lord and owner, whose general character the following anecdote will amply illustrate. As Steward of Kirkcudbright and Lord Warden of the Western Marches, he ordered James Achanna, with a strong and well-armed band, to apprehend Sir Herbert Herries of Terregles, a gentleman of ancient family, who had large possessions in the stewardry, and bring him prisoner to Thrave, despite the tears of his daughter, Lady Maxwell, of Carlaveroc, and the entreaties of his youngest son, who was rector of Kirkpatrick. He was oddly charged with "daring to recover a portion of his _own_ property, which had been appropriated by Achanna and other lawless followers of the house of Douglas, and further, of resisting them in arms."