“Lo! in the painted oriel of the west,
Whose panes the sunken sun incardines,
Like a fair lady at her casement shines
The Evening Star, the star of love and rest.”
Longfellow.
“I can’t see them,” said Frank.
“Nor I either,” was my answer.
The sun had gone down some time ago, not as the song says:
“The sun has gone down o’er the lofty Ben Lomond,
And left the red clouds to preside o’er the scene.”
There were no red clouds worth the name, only far up in the west a few scarlet feathers. But projecting straight up into the heavens from the spot where Sol had sunk in a yellow haze, was one broad beam or ray. It looked strange, weird-like, and it remained for quite a long time. Meanwhile an orange flush of intense depth spread all along the horizon, and the pine-trees on the distant hills were etched out in darkest ink against it; higher up was all sea-green, then blue, and here shone the evening star.
We had the front door of the caravan open. Frank sat on the driver’s seat—the horses were sung in stable, bedded up to the knees—and I and the children lay among the rugs on the coupé. Our coupé, mind you, was quite a verandah.
How very still it was, how beautiful was the scenery all around us! We were far north of Dunkeld, we had toiled through the pass of Kiliecrankie, and were on the verge of one of the loneliest passes of the Grampian range.
There was hardly a sound to be heard, except the monotonous drowsy hum of a waterfall, hidden among those solemn pine-trees in the glen close adjoining.
“No,” continued Frank, “they won’t come out.”