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. Glenuskie Castle was
thus nearly impregnable, so long as it was supplied with water, and for
this all possible provision had been made, by guiding a stream into the
court.

The castle was necessarily narrow and confined; its massive walls took up
much even of the narrow space that the rock afforded; but it had been so
piled up that it seemed as though the builders wished to make height
compensate for straitness. There was, too, an unusual amount of grace,
both in the outline of the gateway with its mighty flanking towers, and
of the lofty donjon tower, that shot up like a great finger above the
Massy More, as the main building was commonly called by the inhabitants
of Glenuskie.

Wondrous as were the walls, and deep-set as were the arches, they had all
that peculiar slenderness of contour that Scottish taste seemed to have
learnt from France; and a little more space was gained at the top, both
of the gateway towers and the donjon, by a projecting cornice of
beautifully vaulted arches supporting a battlement, that gave the