It was a long and monotonous line of crenelated wall, the outline of which was broken only by the spire of the old Greyfriars' Kirk (which was accidentally blown-up in 1718 by powder stored therein by the thrifty bailies of Edinburgh), the turrets of Heriot's Hospital, and at intervals a fantastic stack of great black chimnies studded with oyster-shells. On the left were fields of waving grain, and rows of foliaged trees, that spread over the gradual slope to the sandy margin of the beautiful lake. The little village was buried in silence and sleep; all was hushed under the green thatch of its humble cots. Scarcely a star was visible; it was nearly midnight, and utter solitude surrounded them.
Poor Lilian! Her daring abductor had not as yet formed any defined plan of ultimate procedure. His first object was to have Lilian completely at his mercy, and nowhere could she be more so, than in the strong and solitary house of Drumsheugh, watched by the infamous being introduced to the reader in the preceding chapter.
Within the grated chambers of that house, which he had made the scene of a thousand enormities, Clermistonlee hoped soon by terror, persuasion, or force, to overcome the repugnance Lilian had so long expressed for his addresses. The cold, but decided refusal, of old Lady Grisel, the startled dismay and ill-concealed hauteur of Lilian, when but a few months before he had made a somewhat abrupt and unexpected proposal for her hand, now rose vividly to his mind, and spurred him on to triumph and revenge.
He contemplated with a malicious satisfaction, that even if to-morrow, or a week hence, he should free Lilian from durance, she would go forth with a stain upon her reputation, and imputations upon her honour, worse than death to a girl of her delicacy and spirit--imputations which ultimately might force the proud little beauty into his arms, when the web of his machinations was stronger, and when even her lover would shrink from her as from one contaminated.
Then would be his hour of triumph! and--but here his cogitations were interrupted by the yelling of a great wolf-dog, which thrust its black nose through the barbican-gate of the Highriggs, and barked furiously.