And which would she like to have emphasized the more--the pathetic and
hopeless outlook of the lady in the tower, or the proud state and
ceremony of the earl himself as he used to "come sounding through the
toun"? Well, he would practise a little, and ascertain what he could do
with it--on some occasion when he found himself alone away up in the
hills, with a silence around him unbroken save for the hushed whisper of
the birch-leaves and the distant, low murmur of the Geinig falls.
CHAPTER XI.
THE PHANTOM STAG.
But if he were so anxious about how he should sing (for his audience of
one only) that old Scotch ballad, he was not acting very wisely, or else
he had a sublime confidence in the soundness of his chest; for on his
host's offering him another day's stalking, he cheerfully accepted the
same; and that notwithstanding they had now fallen upon a period of
extremely rough, cold, and wet weather. Was this another piece of
bravado, then--undertaken to produce a favorable impression in a
certain quarter--or had the hunter's hunger really got hold of him? On
the evening before the appointed raid, even the foresters looked glum;
the western hills were ominous and angry, and the wind that came howling
down the strath seemed to foretell a storm.
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