Daily by the sun, nightly by the moon, for many centuries, had the same shadows of the quaint old house been cast on the same places, and it was now an epitome of a proud historic past. It had entertained more than one king of Scotland, and everything in the old mansion was on a grand scale, from the portraits by Jamesone and Vandyck (who married a Ruthven of Gowrie, by the way) to the massive cups won in many a race that glittered on the sideboard. Above the latter, a splendid full-length of the "bonnie Earl" who was wont to flirt with Anne of Denmark in Falkland Woods, and who on the 5th of August, 1600, perished in the famous conspiracy, had its place of honour; and among other portraits of later times, was one by Sir Watson Gordon of the present proprietor, in his uniform as a field officer of the Royal Scots.
The massive mantelpiece of the early Stuart times ascended to the ceiling. It was an exact copy of the famous one in Gowrie House at Perth, and over it in Gothic letters was the same remarkable and apposite legend borne by the former:--
"Truths long concealed at length emerge to light, And controverted facts are rendered bright."
But Roland now perceived with genuine wonder, that the couplet had been chiselled completely away, and the stone frieze was now smooth and bare.
"By whose orders was this done, Runlet?" he asked with angry surprise.
"Those of the Laird, your father," replied the butler.
"I cannot say, Mr. Roland, but he has done some queer things of late," he added with diffidence.
On that mantelpiece were cut the Ruthven arms, bars and lozenges, within a border flowered and counter-flowered, crested with a goat's head, and above them hung the tattered colours of Ruthven's battalion of the 1st Royal Scots--one of four--which had borne them in triumph from the plains of Corunna to the gates of Paris, covered with trophies, among which are still the cross of St. Andrew and the crowned thistle of James VI.
Off the dining hall opened a long and lofty corridor hung with moth-eaten tapestries of russet and green hues and with trophies of arms, each having its history; such as the helmet of Sir Walter Ruthven who died by the side of King David at the battle of Durham; the sword of Sir William who became hostage for King James I.; the pennon of the Master of Ruthven who fell at Flodden, and weapons of later wars, with trophies of the chase, heads and skulls of lions shot in Africa, tigers in Bengal, bears in Russia, of elephants from the miasmatic Terrai of Nepaul--spoils wherever his father had served; and of noble deer from the forests of the adjacent hills.