Then of Castle Dark is my story. Is the cruisie alight on the rafter? More peats, little one, on the fire.
Once upon a time Castle Dark was a place of gentility and stirring days. You have heard it,--you know it; now it is like a deer's skull in Wood Mamore, empty, eyeless, sounding to the whistling wind, but blackened instead of bleached in the threshing rains. When the day shines and the sun coaxes the drowsy mists from the levels by the river, that noble house that was brisks up and grey-whitens, minding maybe of merry times; the softest smirr of rain--and the scowl comes to corbie-stone and gable; black, black grow the stones of old ancient Castle Dark! Little one, _m' eudail_, put the door to, and the sneck down.
"True for you, Paruig Dali; you know the place as if you had seen it."
With eyes Paruig Dali has never seen it. But my friends tell me what they know, and beyond I have learned of myself. Up the river-side, many a time I pass to the place and over its low dykes, dry-stone, broken and crumbling to the heel. The moss is soft on the little roads, so narrow and so without end, winding round the land; the nettle cocks him right braggardly over the old home of bush and flower, poisoning the air. Where the lady dozed in her shady seat below the alder-tree, looking out between half-shut eyes at the proud Highlands--loch, glen, and mountain--is but a root rotten, and hacked by the woodman's whittle. A tangle of wild wood, bracken, and weed smothers the rich gardens of Castle Dark.
"It is so, it is so, Paruig Dali, blind man, prince among splendid pipers and storied men!"
And to stand on the broad clanging steps that lifted from the hunting-road to the great door--that is a thinking man's trial. To me, then, will be coming graveyard airs, yellow and vexatious, searching eager through my bones for this old man's last weakness. "Thou sturdy dog!" will they be saying, "some day, some day! Look at this strong tower!" With an ear to the gap on the side of the empty ditch, I can hear the hollowness of the house rumbling with pains, racked at _cabar_ and corner-stone, the thought and the song gone clean away. There is no window, then, that has not a complaint of its own; no loop-hole, no vent, no grassy chimney that the blind fellow cannot hear the pipe of. Straight into the heart's core of Castle Dark looks the sun; the deep tolbooth of the old reivers and the bed-chamber of the maid are open wide to the night and to the star!