| Signal of Death (see [p. 10]) | A. Monro | [Frontispiece] |
| facing page | ||
| Thoughts of Home | A. Monro | [4] |
| The Web Returned | A. S. Boyd | [28] |
| The Death of Keppoch | Harrington Mann | [32] |
| On the Blasted Heath | A. Monro | [58] |
| Jeanie | A. S. Boyd | [60] |
| Throwing the Hammer | A. S. Boyd | [72] |
| Massacre of Glencoe | A. Monro | [108] |
| The Gentle Art | S. Reid | [120] |
| Forbidden Waters | S. Reid | [136] |
| Murray’s Curse | A. Monro | [144] |
| Archie | A. S. Boyd | [170] |
| “Serve!” | S. Reid | [180] |
| The Last Hour | A. S. Boyd | [204] |
| Seven Miles of Ice | S. Reid | [216] |
| Trongate of St Mungo | S. Reid | [232] |
A ROMAN ROAD.
Still and soft with the mild radiance of early spring the afternoon sunshine sleeps upon the rich country, moor and woodland and meadow, that stretches away southward towards the Border. The top of a ruined tower far off rises grey amid the shadowy woods, and a river, like a shining serpent, gleams in blue windings through the russet valley-land, while the smoke of an ancient Border town hangs in the distance, like an amber haze, above the side of its narrow strath. Northward, too, league upon league, sweep the rich pasture-lands of another river valley. The red roofs of more than one peaceful hamlet glow warm there among the bowering road-avenues of ancient trees. And afar at the foot of the purple mountain to the west lies the grey sequestered abbey of the Bruce.
North and south upon that rich landscape history marks with a crimson stain the field of many a battle; and though peace and silence sleep upon it to-day in the sunshine, hardly is there hamlet or meadow in sight whose name does not recall some struggle of bygone times. Across these hills a hundred and forty years ago Prince Charles Edward led the last raid of the clans, and before his time the battlefields of Douglas and Percy, of Cumberland and Liddesdale, carry the mind back into the mists of antiquity, out of which looms the sullen splendour of more classic arms.
Here, straight as a swan-flight along the ridge of the watershed, commanding the country for miles upon either side, still runs the ancient highway of Imperial Rome. From the golden milestone of Augustus in the Capitol, in a line scarce broken by the blue straits of the sea, ran hither the path of that ancient Power. Of old, along these far-stretching arteries came pulsing in tidal waves the iron blood of the stern heart beating far away in the south. From the wooded valleys below, the awed inhabitants doubtless long ago looked up and wondered, as the dark masses of the legions came rolling along these hills.
Tide after tide, like the rising sea, they rolled to break upon the Grampian barriers of the North. Here rode Agricola, his face set towards the dark and mist-wrapt mountains beyond the Forth, eager to add by their conquest the word “Britannicus” to his name. Here by his side, it is probable, rode the courtly Tacitus, his son-in-law, to describe to future ages the Scotland of that time, “lashed,” as he knew it, “by the billows of a prodigious sea.” Southward here, stern and intent, once sped the swift couriers bearing to Rome tidings of that great battle at Mons Grampus, where the bodies of ten thousand Caledonians slain barred the northward march of the Roman general. Southward, again, along this road it is almost certain has passed the majesty of a Roman Emperor himself. For in the year 211 the Emperor Severus, ill and angry, leaving fifty thousand dead among the unsubdued mountains of the North, was borne out of Scotland by the remnant of his army, to die of chagrin at York. And here, long ago, by his flickering watch-fire at night, the Roman sentinel, perhaps, has let his thoughts wander again sadly to his home by the yellow Tiber two thousand miles away, to the vine-clad cot where the dark-eyed sister of his boyhood, the little Livia or Tessa, would be ripening now like the olives, with no one to care for and protect her.
