The Caged Lion

A master hand has so often described the glens and ravines of Scotland that it seems vain and presumptuous to meddle with them; and yet we must ask our readers to figure to themselves a sharp cleft sloping downwards to a brawling mountain stream the sides scattered with gray rocks of every imaginable size interspersed here and there with heather gorse or furze. Just in the widest part of the valley a sort of platform of rock jutted out from the hill-side and afforded a station for one of those tall narrow grim-looking fastnesses that were the strength of Scotland as well as her bane. Either by nature or art the rock had been scarped away on three sides so that the walls of the castle rose sheer from the steep descent except where the platform was connected with the mountain side by as it were an isthmus joining the peninsula to the main rock; and even this isthmus a narrow ridge of rock just wide enough for the passage of a single horse had been cut through no doubt with great labour and rendered impassable except by the lowering of a drawbridge.