Women shrieked, cattle bellowed, dogs howled, men ran to and fro, cursing and swearing without intermission, the lumbering of the old guns backwards and forwards shook the battlements, the court resounded with the hasty gallop of messengers who went and returned upon errands of importance, and the din of warlike preparation was mingled with the sound of female laments.
Such a Babel of discord might have awakened the slumbers of the very dead, and, therefore, was not long ere it dispelled the abstracted reveries of Edith Bellenden.

She sent out Jenny to bring her the cause of the tumult which shook the castle to its very basis; but Jenny, once engaged in the bustling tide, found so much to ask and to hear, that she forgot the state of anxious uncertainty in which she had left her young mistress.

Having no pigeon to dismiss in pursuit of information when her raven messenger had failed to return with it, Edith was compelled to venture in quest of it out of the ark of her own chamber into the deluge of confusion which overflowed the rest of the Castle.

Six voices speaking at once, informed her, in reply to her first enquiry, that Claver'se and all his men were killed, and that ten thousand whigs were marching to besiege the castle, headed by John Balfour of Burley, young Milnwood, and Cuddie Headrigg.

This strange association of persons seemed to infer the falsehood of the whole story, and yet the general bustle in the Castle intimated that danger was certainly apprehended.
"Where is Lady Margaret ?" was Edith's second question.
"In her oratory," was the reply: a cell adjoining to the chapel, in which the good old lady was wont to spend the greater part of the days destined by the rules of the Episcopal Church to devotional observances, as also the anniversaries of those on which she had lost her husband and her children, and, finally, those hours, in which a deeper and more solemn address to Heaven was called for, by national or domestic calamity.
"Where, then," said Edith, much alarmed, "is Major Bellenden ?" "On the battlements of the Tower, madam, pointing the cannon," was the reply.
To the battlements, therefore, she made her way, impeded by a thousand obstacles, and found the old gentleman in the midst of his natural military element, commanding, rebuking, encouraging, instructing, and exercising all the numerous duties of a good governor.
"In the name of God, what is the matter, uncle ?" exclaimed Edith.
"The matter, my love ?" answered the Major coolly, as, with spectacles on his nose, he examined the position of a gun--"The matter?
Why,--raise her breech a thought more, John Gudyill--the matter?
Why, Claver'se is routed, my dear, and the whigs are coming down upon us in force, that's all the matter." "Gracious powers!" said Edith, whose eye at that instant caught a glance of the road which ran up the river, "and yonder they come!" "Yonder?
where ?" said the veteran; and, his eyes taking the same direction, he beheld a large body of horsemen coming down the path.
"Stand to your guns, my lads!" was the first exclamation; "we'll make them pay toll as they pass the heugh .-- But stay, stay, these are certainly the Life-Guards." "O no, uncle, no," replied Edith; "see how disorderly they ride, and how ill they keep their ranks; these cannot be the fine soldiers who left us this morning." "Ah, my dear girl!" answered the Major, "you do not know the difference between men before a battle and after a defeat; but the Life-Guards it is, for I see the red and blue and the King's colours.