The youths, burning as they were for satisfaction, saw the necessity of agreeing to the recommendation of their father; and, dismounting again, they lifted the stiff body from among the clotted grass, and, wrapping it in a mantle, laid it over the backs of two of their horses, and proceeded in mournful procession towards home, where Mary Scott as yet sat at the castle window indulging in the meditation to which the expedition of her husband and her sons had given rise. The sounds of the horn that had struck her ear had long ceased, and she pictured to herself the bold party scouring over Gilmanscleugh, the intended inheritance of her son, the Forester, the best beloved of her, as he was of his father, for boldness, filial affection, and beauty. She did not expect them till the evening was far gone, and then it would be her duty and greatest delight to prepare for them the cheerful bickering fire, and the warm refreshing meal, and welcome them to their home and their pleasures with her accustomed looks of satisfaction, her well-chosen words of good-humour, and her questions of success, put in such form as might afford the opportunity of recounting their deeds of arms or woodcraft. Many a time had she enjoyed these highest pleasures of the dutiful wife, affectionate mother, and spirited companion; and there was yet time and opportunity in store for her to enjoy them again with undiminished relish. Casting her eyes over the side of the glen, she saw the procession of her husband and five sons, with the dead body of the sixth, coming slowly along the middle of the dell. This was not the way in which old Wat of Harden usually returned to his castle; there were no cattle driven before him, no winding of his horn among the hills, no whoop of triumph from his rough throat. The slow tread of the horses' feet, as they paced the sod, came upon her ear with a dead, hollow sound; and her heart became busy with its mystic divinations, before her eye could trace all the details of the unusual scene. But feature by feature of this first representation of a mother's bereavement opened gradually on her view; she ran over the faces of her sons and that of her husband, and soon distinguished the beloved victim; the expressions of the countenances of the bearers told her the extent of the calamity, if the form of the extended body, where Death sat triumphant, and gave forth those indications of his presence which cannot be misunderstood, had left any doubt on her mind that her fair Forester was no more. But her griefs knew no feminine paroxysms, the strength of her nerves enabled her to contemplate even the scene of a dead son with that strange calmness which the strongest feeling can draw from the depths of the mental constitution, as its cover and panoply in the hour of nature's greatest need. As the procession approached, she saw Harden draw his hand over his eyes, and the sobs of the youths fell on her ear.