The two men halted; the dogs settled themselves upon a sunny rock, Bruce with his pointed nose comfortably across Dirk’s rough, warm frill, and Sneeshing curled himself up in the angle formed by the two dogs’ bodies, close up to and as much under Dirk’s long hair as he could; while Scoodrach seated himself on a huge block of black slate, which did not belong to the place, but must have fallen from some vein high up the gorge, and been brought down by wintry floods, a little way at a time, during hundreds of years, till it lay jammed in among the great blocks of granite like a chip in a basin of lumps of sugar. This piece of slate suited Scoodrach’s eye, and he took out his big knife and began to sharpen it.
Long Shon took a little curly sheep’s horn out of his pouch, and had a pinch of snuff.
Tavish filled a dumpy black wooden pipe, and began to smoke; while Kenneth, as he smilingly watched Max, hummed over Black Donald’s bagpipe tune, “The March of the Clan Mackhai.”
“Well,” said Kenneth at last, breaking the silence, through which came a low, deep, humming roar, “what do you think of Dunroe?”
“Think!” cried Max, in a low, deep voice; “it’s heavenly.”
And he stood gazing up the narrow glen, with its intensely dark shadows among the rocks, through which the brilliant sun-rays struck down, making the raindrops which hung upon the delicate leaves of the pendent birches glisten like diamonds.
For it was one beautiful series of pictures at which the lad gazed: patches of vivid blue above, seen through the openings among the trees; right below, the foaming river coming down in a hundred miniature falls; silver-stemmed and ruddy-bronze birches rooting in the sides, and sending their leaves and twigs hanging over like cascades of verdure; pines and spruces rising up on all sides like pyramids of deep, dark green; and everywhere the masses of rock glittering with crystals, and clothed with mosses of the most vivid tints, and among whose crevices the ferns threw up their pointed, softly-laced fronds.
The sunlight glanced down like sheaves of dazzling silver arrows; and over the water, and softly riding down the glen, came soft, filmy clouds of mist, so fine and delicate that they constantly faded into invisibility; while every now and then there were passing glimpses of colour appearing and disappearing over the rushing torrent, as if there had been a rainbow somewhere up above—one which had broken up, and these were its fragments being borne away.
“I never saw anything so beautiful,” said Max, almost wondering at his companion’s want of enthusiasm.
“And do you know what makes it so beautiful?”