Historical memoirs of Rob Roy and the Clan Macgregor

308 NOTICES OF LADY GRANGE.
remorse would sometimes come to her relief,
and convince her that to her own imprudence
much of her suffering was to be attributed ;
and when thus overcome with grief, she was
frequently found reclining on a rock, nearly in a
state of insensibility!
While thus suffering under the agonies of
despair* she often demanded writing materials
to address her husband and her friends, that she
might own her errors, and in contrite language,
crave their forgiveness and their pity ; but her
unrelenting host denied her that consolation,
and she eventually fell into a settled depression
of spirits, which rendered her inattentive to
surrounding objects. She would scarcely answer
any question ; often refused food ; and became
so emaciated, that she appeared more a spectre
than an inhabitant of the earth. In addition to
her misery, the winter had now set in, a season
attended with peculiar dreariness and gloom in
the northern islands of the Hebrides.
On an evening of the second winter she spent
on this island, her guardian and his man-servant
having gone to secure the only boat on the
island, were alarmed by vivid flashes of fire
from the northern sky, which was red as blood,
and alternately black. They hastily returned,