But the late Macleod built a bridge over the stream, and the present laird is executing an entrance suitable to the character of this remarkable fortalice, by making a portal between two advanced towers, and an outer court, from which he proposes to throw a draw-bridge over to the high rock in front of the castle.'

How I strained my eager eyes through the darkness as I thought that the distant black keep of our fortalice might even now be visible!

The original fortalice of the Muries, half a mile distant, was, like Glencardine, a ruin.

Close beside it is the Tower Dean, so called from an ancient fortalice of the Home family which once defended it, and which stands beside a bridge held in just execration by all cyclists on the Great North Road.

They are a numerous race, and inhabit little fortalices on the coasts of our sea-girt isle, which to an imaginative mind would give it the appearance of a beleagured citadel.

When first seen through the haze of morning, it resembled a huge elephant supporting an embattled tower; a little after, it assumed the similitude of a gigantic warrior in a recumbent posture, armed cap-a-pie; anon, this apparition vanished, and in its stead rose a fortalice in miniature, with pigmy sentinels stationed on its ramparts.

We found no remains of either tower or fortalice, save an old chapel and churchyard, and a mill and mill-lead, where corn never grew, but where, as old Satchells very appropriately says, Had heather-bells been corn of the best, The Buccleuch mill would have had a noble grist.

Castle and fortalice opened their gates before Wallace as he marched from Ayr to Berwick; but at Berwick he encountered stout resistance from a noble foeman, the Earl of Gloucester, who with his garrison yielded only to starvation.

He carried materials likewise along with him for the construction of a blockhouse, or fortalice, in case he found that precaution requisite.

We entered a little fortalice with a cannon in it, in an embrasure which at that moment struck me as unnecessarily vast, even though it was partly closed by a frail packing-case lid.

Across the river was the somewhat dilapidated fortalice of Tilquhillie, the seat of an ancient and decayed branch of the Douglases.