On Moorland and Mountain.
“Yon wild mossy mountains sae lofty and wide,
That nurse in their bosom the youth of the Clyde,
Where the grouse lead their coveys thro’ the heather to feed,
And the shepherd tends his flocks as he pipes on his reed.
Not Gowrie’s rich valley, nor Forth’s sunny shores,
To me hae the charm o’ yon wild mossy moors.”
Burns.
Scene: The parlour of an old-fashioned hotel in the Scottish Highlands. It is the afternoon of an autumn day; a great round-topped mountain, though some distance off, quite overshadows the window. This window is open, and the cool evening breeze is stealing in, laden with the perfume of the honeysuckle which almost covers a solitary pine tree close by. There is the drowsy hum of bees in the air, and now and then the melancholy lilt of the yellow-hammer—last songster of the season. Two gentlemen seated at dessert. For a time both are silent. They are thinking.
“Say, Lyle,” says one at last, “you have been staring unremittingly at the purple heather on yon hill-top for the last ten minutes, during which time, my friend, you haven’t spoken one word.”
Lyle laughed quietly, and cracked a walnut.
“Do you see,” he said, “two figures going on and on upwards through the heather yonder?”
“I see what I take to be a couple of blue-bottle flies creeping up a patch of crimson.”
“Those blue-bottles are our boys.”
“How small they seem!”
“Yet how plucky! That hill, Fitzroy, is precious nearly a mile in height above the sea-level, and it is a good ten miles’ climb to the top of it. They have the worst of it before them, and they haven’t eaten a morsel since morning, but I’ll wager the leg of the gauger they won’t give in.”