The evening of the night described in the preceding chapter had been a glorious one. The giant shadows of the rock-built city were falling from its central hill far to the eastward, and all its myriad casements were gleaming in the light of the western sky, where amid clouds of crimson, edged with gold, the sun's bright disc seemed to rest on the dark and wooded ridge of the Corstorphine hills, from whence it poured its dazzling flood of farewell radiance on all the undulations of the wide and varied scenery. On the vast and dusky mass of the hoary city which presented all the extremes of strong light, and deep retiring shadow, on the great stone crown of St. Giles, on the cordon of towers that girt the castled rock, and the stagnant lake that washed the city's base two hundred feet below, fell full the blood-red lustre of the setting sun. The same warm tints glared along the western slopes of those bluff craigs and hills that rise to the westward, green, silent, stern, and pillared with basalt, rent by volcanic throes into chasms and gorges; where, though darkness was gathering, the slanting sunbeams shot through, and gilded objects far beyond. The loch, the city's northern barrier, usually so reedy and so stagnant, now swollen to its utmost marge by recent rains, was dotted by wild ducks and teals, that seemed floating in liquid gold, and like a polished mirror the water reflected its banks with singular distinctness. On one side appeared the inverted city, where gable, tower, and bartizan shot up so spectral, close, and dense, that it seemed like one vast fairy castle; on the other, a lonely and grassy bank dotted with whins, alder trees, weeping willows, and grazing sheep, while the old square tower of St. Cuthbert, rising above a clump of firs at one end of the loch, was balanced by the church of the Holy Trinity and its ancient orchard at the other. On the northern bank of this artificial sheet of water flocks of crows were wheeling in circles among the furrows, and following the slow-drawn plough; and from the thatched cottages of St. Ninians, that nestled close to the ruins of an ancient convent, the smoke arose in long steady columns, and unbroken by the faintest puff of wind soared into the evening sky, and melted away into the blue atmosphere. The sun had set. The last rays died away on the cathedral spire, and Arthur's round volcanic cone; the last wayfarer had been ferried across the loch, and had disappeared over the opposite hill; successively the seven barriers of the city were closed for the night, and then the evening bell from the old wooden spire of the Tron rang on the rising wind. Though this evening had been a beautiful one, and all the gayer denizens of the city had flocked to the Lawnmarket and Castle Hill (then the only and usual promenades), the tall feather and laced mantle of Lord Clermistonlee had not been seen there.