"Oh! you needn't smile; she has promised, and so after her I am going to call our newly-discovered El Dorado--Floriana."
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We are back again in bonnie Scotland, and it was Conal himself who exclaimed, when bonnie Glenvoie, for the first time since coming home, and as he was nearing it, spread itself out before him:
"O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires! what mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band
That knits me to thy rugged strand!"
They had driven a great part of the way to Glenvoie, but had been seen while still a long way off coming down the glen, and not only the stalwart chief himself, but Frank's father, with about half a dozen dogs, came out to meet them.
Many of the dogs were old hill-mates of Viking's, so that was all right, and a glorious gambol they had.
But just as the principal actors and most of the company crowd the stage before the curtain falls, so they do at the end of a story.
If I tell you that the reunion was a happy one, I can do but little more.
Poor to some considerable extent both Colonel Trelawney and the laird were, but I speak the honest truth when I say that had their brave boys returned penniless and hatless, they would have been sure of a hearty Highland welcome under the old roof-tree.
Yes, Flora had grown very much too, but she had also grown more beautiful--I do not like the word "pretty"--and as she bade her brothers and her cousin welcome home, the tears were quivering on her eyelids and a flush of joy suffused her face.