Mr. Donald Gunn, the worthy Dominie of Wick, who had agreed to act as a guide to Girnigo, was, soon after sunrise, at the door, summoning the party to make ready for the journey; for, although the morning was fair and bright, he had seen signs in the preceding evening, which made him apprehensive of another storm. ‘The wind,’ said he to Walkinshaw, who was the first that obeyed the call, ‘often, at this time of the year, rises about noon, when the waves jump with such agility against the rocks, that the most periculous points of view cannot be seen in their proper elegance, without the risk of breaking your neck, or at least being washed away, and drowned for ever.’

Walkinshaw, accordingly, upon Gunn’s report, as he called it, roused the whole party, and they set out for Staxigo, preceded by the Dominie, who, at every turn of the road, ‘indexed,’ as he said, ‘the most interesting places.’

During the walk to the village, the weather still continued propitious; but the schoolmaster observed that a slight occasional breeze from the north-east, the wildest wind that blows on that coast, rippled the glassy sea, as it undulated among the rocks below their path; a sure indication, so early in the morning, of a tempestuous afternoon. His companions, however, unacquainted with the omens of that ravenous shore, heard his remark without anxiety.

After breakfasting at Elspeth Heddle’s public in Staxigo on milk, and ham and eggs, a partan, and haddocks, they went on to the ruins of Girnigo. The occasional fetching of the wind’s breath, which the Dominie had noticed in their morning walk, was now become a steady gale, and the waves began to break against the rugged cliffs and headlands to the southward, insomuch, that, when the party reached the peninsula on which the princely ruins of the united castles of Girnigo and Sinclair are situated, they found several fishermen, belonging to Wick, who had gone out to sea at daybreak, busily drawing their boats on shore, in the little port on the south side of the cliffs, under the walls. The visitors inquired why they were so careful in such bright and summer weather; but they directed the attention of the Dominie to long flakes of goat’s beard in the skies, and to the sea-birds flying towards the upland.

By this time the billows were breaking white and high on the extremities of Noss-head, and the long grass on the bartisans and window-sills of the ruins streamed and hissed in the wind. The sun was bright; but the streaks of hoary vapour that veined the pure azure of the heavens retained their position and menacing appearance. There was, however, nothing in the phenomena of the skies to occasion any apprehension; and the party, without thinking of the immediate horrors of a storm, sympathised with their guide, as he related to them the mournful legends of those solitary towers. But, although he dwelt, with particular emphasis, on the story of the Bishop, whom one of the Earls of Caithness had ordered his vassals to boil in a cauldron, on account of his extortions, their sympathy was more sorrowfully awakened by the woeful fate of the young Master of Caithness, who, in 1572, fell a victim to the jealousy of his father.

‘George, the Earl at that time,’ said the schoolmaster, ‘with his son the Master of Caithness, was on the leet of the lovers of Euphemia, the only daughter of an ancestor of Lord Reay. The lady was young and beautiful, and naturally preferred the son to the father; but the Earl was a haughty baron, and, in revenge for his son proving a more thriving wooer, was desirous of putting him for a season out of the way—but not by the dirk, as the use and wont of that epoch of unrule might have justified. Accordingly, one afternoon, as they were sitting together in the hall at yonder architraved window in the second story, the wrathful Earl clapped his hands thrice, and in came three black-aviced kerns in rusted armour, who, by a signal harmonized between them and Earl George, seized the lawful heir, and dragged him to a dampish captivity in yon vault, of which you may see the yawning hungry throat in the chasm between the two principal lumps of the buildings.’

The learned Dominie then proceeded to relate the sequel of this strange story—by which it appeared, that, soon after the imprisonment of his son, the Earl being obliged to render his attendance at the court of Stirling, left his son in the custody of Murdow Mackean Roy, who, soon after the departure of his master, was persuaded by the prisoner to connive at a plan for his escape. But the plot was discovered by William, the Earl’s second son, who apprehended Murdow, and executed him in the instant. Immediately after, he went down into the dungeon, and threatened his brother also with immediate punishment, if he again attempted to corrupt his keepers. The indignant young nobleman, though well ironed, sprang upon Lord William, and bruised him with such violence, that he soon after died. David and Inghrame Sinclair were then appointed custodiers of the prisoner; but, availing themselves of the absence of the Earl, and the confusion occasioned by the death of William, they embezzled the money in the castle, and fled, leaving their young lord in the dungeon, a prey to the horrors of hunger, of which he died.

About seven years after, the Earl, while he lamented the fatal consequences of his own rash rivalry, concealed his thirst for revenge. Having heard that Inghrame Sinclair, who had retired with his booty to a distant part of the country, intended to celebrate the marriage of his daughter by a great feast, he resolved to make the festival the scene of punishment. Accordingly, with a numerous retinue, he proceeded to hunt in the neighbourhood of Inghrame Sinclair’s residence; and, availing himself of the hospitable courtesies of the time, he entered the banquet-hall, and slew the traitor in the midst of his guests.—

While the visitors in the lee of the ruins were listening to the Dominie’s legend, the wind had continued to increase and the sea to rise, and the spray of the waves was springing in stupendous water-spouts and spires of foam over all the headlands in view to the south.

‘Aye,’ said the Dominie, pointing out to them the ruins of Clyth Castle, over which the sea was breaking white in the distance, ‘we may expect a dry storm, for Clyth has got on its shroud. Look where it stands like a ghost on the shore. It is a haunted and unhallowed monument.

‘In olden and ancient times the Laird of Clyth went over to Denmark, and, being at the court of Elsineur, counterfeited, by the help of a handsome person, and a fine elocution, the style and renown of the most prosperous gentleman in all Caithness, by which he beguiled a Prince of Copenhagen to give him his daughter in marriage, a lady of rare and surpassing beauty. After his marriage he returned to Scotland to prepare for the reception of his gorgeous bride; but, when he beheld his own rude turret amidst the spray of the ocean’s sea, and thought of the golden palaces and sycamore gardens of Denmark, he was shocked at the idea of a magnificent princess inhabiting such a bleak abode, and overwhelmed with the dread of the indignation that his guilt would excite among her friends. So when the Danish man-of-war, with the lady on board, was approaching the coast, he ordered lights and fires along the cliffs of Ulbster, by which the pilots were bewildered, and the ship was dashed in pieces. The princess and her maids of honour, with many of the sailors, were drowned; but her body was found, beautiful in death, with rings on her fingers, and gems in her ears; and she was interred, as became a high-born lady of her breeding, in the vault where she now lies, among the ancestors of Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster; and ever since that time, the Castle of Clyth has been untenanted, and as often as the wind blows from the north-east, it is covered with a shroud as if doing penance for the maiden of Denmark.’

Notwithstanding the pedantry in the Dominie’s language in relating this tradition, the unaffected earnestness with which he expressed himself, moved the compassion of his auditors, and some of the ladies shed tears; which the gentlemen observing, Walkinshaw, to raise their spirits, proposed they should go forward towards Noss-head to view the dreadful turbulency of the breakers. But, before they had approached within half a mile of the promontory, the violence of the gale had increased to such a degree, that they found themselves several times obliged to take refuge in the hollows of the rocks, unable to withstand the fury of the wind, and the lavish showers of spray, that rose in sheets from the waves, and came heavier than rain on the blast.