Chapter 2

In yon lone vale his early youth was bred,
Not solitary then--the bugle-horn
Of fell Alecto often waked its windings,
From where the brook joins the majestic river,
To the wild northern bog, the curlew's haunt,
Where oozes forth its first and feeble streamlet.
OLD PLAY.

We have said, that most of the feuars dwelt in the village belonging
to their townships. This was not, however, universally the case. A
lonely tower, to which the reader must now be introduced, was at least
one exception to the general rule.

It was of small dimensions, yet larger than those which occurred in
the village, as intimating that, in case of assault, the proprietor
would have to rely upon his own unassisted strength. Two or three
miserable huts, at the foot of the fortalice, held the bondsmen and
tenants of the feuar. The site was a beautiful green knoll, which
started up suddenly in the very throat of a wild and narrow glen, and
which, being surrounded, except on one side, by the winding of a small
stream, afforded a position of considerable strength.

But the great security of Glendearg, for so the place was called, lay
in its secluded, and almost hidden situation. To reach the tower, it
was necessary to travel three miles up the glen, crossing about twenty
times the little stream, which, winding through the narrow valley,
encountered at every hundred yards the opposition of a rock or
precipitous bank on the one side, which altered its course, and caused
it to shoot off in an oblique direction to the other. The hills which
ascend on each side of this glen are very steep, and rise boldly over
the stream, which is thus imprisoned within their barriers. The sides
of the glen are impracticable for horse, and are only to be traversed
by means of the sheep-paths which lie along their sides. It would not
be readily supposed that a road so hopeless and so difficult could
lead to any habitation more important than the summer shealing of a
shepherd.

Yet the glen, though lonely, nearly inaccessible, and sterile, was not
then absolutely void of beauty. The turf which covered the small
portion of level ground on the sides of the stream, was as close and
verdant as if it had occupied the scythes of a hundred gardeners once
a-fortnight; and it was garnished with an embroidery of daisies and
wild flowers, which the scythes would certainly have destroyed. The
little brook, now confined betwixt closer limits, now left at large to
choose its course through the narrow valley, danced carelessly on from
stream to pool, light and unturbid, as that better class of spirits
who pass their way through life, yielding to insurmountable obstacles,
but as far from being subdued by them as the sailor who meets by