Gray's weak state after his many wounds, combined with his grief, at what he deemed the loss for ever of Murielle, affected him so much, that during the severe winter of 1440 he nearly sank under his sufferings. He rallied, however, by youth and inborn strength, though good St. Giles, of Edinburgh, to whose altar, in the spirit of the times, he devoted several pounds of wax and silver, got the whole credit of the change. Lady Agnes of Crichton and the courtiers said he was "dying of love." The chancellor could believe in a stout man-at-arms dying of a slash from Earl James's battle-axe, but _not_ of love for Murielle, his kinswoman, however beautiful and gentle she might be; so he only smiled at their surmises, and when Gray was able to ride a little every day on a quiet horse led by his page, Crichton resolved to find him some active employment so soon as he was stronger. So Gray, as we have said, writhed in inactivity when his friends and kinsmen, MacLellan and Andrew Gray, of Balgarno, had marched from Stirling to Athole to capture the great freebooter, John Gorm Stewart. He had heard from Andrew Gray of the conflict on the north Inch of Perth, where the sheriff had been cloven down by the two-handed sword of Stewart, who, in turn, had been slain by MacLellan, but not until he had so severely wounded the latter, that he had been compelled to return for a time to his castle of Raeberry, on the shore of the Solway Firth. And during this long period of seclusion and inactivity Gray had longed with all a lover's restless longing for some tidings of Murielle; but those about the chancellor were either unwilling or unable to afford him any. So the time rolled wearily on. One afternoon he was sitting dreamily in the recess of a window of St. Margaret's Tower, which stood upon the western verge of the castle rock, but was demolished during the long siege of 1573. It was a somewhat gloomy apartment (it was _then_ three hundred and eighty years old), built in the Saxon style, with grotesquely-carved heads and zig-zag mouldings round the arches, and hung with long russet-coloured tapestry, which had been worked by the hands of Annabella, the queen of Robert III., to hide the bare, rough walls. This tapestry was old now; its tenter-hooks were rusty, and it swayed in the currents of wind, which passed through the fireplace, on the shelf of which, in memory of the good queen who once dwelt there, was inscribed the pious request,-- Sancta Margarita, ora pro nobis. Beneath the windows was the verdant slope whereon three mounds, of solemn aspect, were traceable. The coarse dog-grass, the white gowan, and pink witch-thimbles (or foxglove), grew there in rank luxuriance now, and as they swayed in the evening wind, were all that marked where lay the three victims of that terrible vigil of St. Catharine.