Mrs. Gordon could scarcely have attained to her eighteenth year at the Revolution; and yet she had been exposed to suffering on the score of religion, in the previous troubles. There was a story among the people, that her ears had been cut off; it was even observed, that her tresses were always so arranged as to conceal the supposed mutilation; and some of the wilder spirits of the place used to call her _Luggie_, in allusion to the story; but she was too highly respected for the name to take. When a very old woman, she was one day combing her hair in the presence of a little girl, who was employed in dressing up the apartment in which she sat, and who threw at her from time to time a very inquisitive glance. “Come here, Maggie,” said the lady, who guessed the cause of her solicitude; “you are a curious little girl, and have heard that I have lost my ears--have you not? Here they are, however,” she continued, shading back her hair as she spoke, and displaying two very pretty ones; “wicked men once threatened to cut them off, and a knife was sharpened for the purpose, but God permitted them not.” CHAPTER IX. “The scart bears weel wi’ the winter’s cauld, The aik wi’ the gurly win’; But the bonny wee burds, and the sweet wee flowers, Were made for the calm an’ the sun.”--OLD BALLAD. [Sidenote: THE CHAPLAIN’S LAIR.] The southern Sutor terminates, where it overhangs the junction of the Cromarty and Moray Firths, in a noble precipice, which, planting its iron feet in the sea, rears its ample forehead a hundred yards over it. On the top there is a moss-covered, partially wooded knoll, which, commanding from its abrupt height and semi-insular situation a wide and diversified prospect, has been known from time immemorial to the town’s-people as “the Look-out.” It is an exquisite little spot, sweet in itself, and sublime in what it commands;--a fine range of forest scenery stretches along the background, while in front the eye may wander over the hills of seven different counties, and so vast an extent of sea, that, on the soberest calculation, we cannot estimate it under a thousand square miles. Nor need there be any lack of pleasing association to heighten the effect of a landscape which, among its other scenes of the wild and the wonderful, includes the bleak moor of Culloden, and the “heath near Forres.” It is, however, to the immense tract of sea which it overlooks that the little knoll owes its deepest interest, and when, after a storm from the west has scattered the shipping bound for port, and day after day has gone by without witnessing their expected return--there are wistful eyes that turn from it to the wide waste below, and anxious hearts that beat quicker and higher, as sail after sail starts up, spark-like, on the dim horizon, and grows into size and distinctness as it nears the shore. Nor is the rock beneath devoid of an interest exclusively its own.