Morag: A Tale of the Highlands of Scotland

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Morag, by Janet Milne Rae
NEW YORK: ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS, 530 Broadway. 1875.
THE FIRST MORNING IN THE GLEN.
O you know the joyous feeling of opening your eyes on the first morning after your arrival among new scenes, and of seeing the landscape, which has been shrouded by darkness on the previous evening, lying clear and calm in the bright morning sunlight?
This was Blanche Clifford's experience as she stood at an eastward window, with an eager face, straining her eye across miles of moorland, which undulated far away, like purple seas lying in the golden light. Away, and up and on stretched the heather, till it seemed to rear itself into great waves of rock, which stood out clear and distinct, with the sunlight glinting into the gray, waterworn fissures, lighting them up like a smile on a wrinkled face. And beyond, in the dim distance, hills on hills are huddled, rearing themselves in dark lowering masses against the blue sky, like the shoulders of mighty monsters in a struggle for the nearest place to the clouds. For many weeks Blanche had been dreaming dreams and seeing visions of this scene, as she sat in her London schoolroom. And this is Glen Eagle! she murmured, with a satisfied sigh, when at last she turned her eyes from the more distant landscape, and climbing into the embrasured window of the quaint old room in which she awoke that morning, leant out to try and discover what sort of a building this new home might be. A perpendicular, gaunt wall, so lichen-spotted that it seemed as if the stones had taken to growing, was all that she could see; and under it there stretched a smooth grassy slope, belted by a grove of ancient ash-trees. A pleasant breeze, wafting a delicious scent of heather, came in at the open window, and played among Blanche's curls, reminding her how delightful it would be to go out under the blue sky; so she ran off in search of her papa, that she might begin her explorations at once.