he was brought up with a round turn, as sailors would say, on nearing an old ruined church.
He was by this time
“Past the birks[B] and meikle[C] stane
Whare drunken Charlie brak’s neck-bane:
And thro’ the whins, and by the cairn
Whare hunters fand the murder’d bairn;
And near the thorn, aboon the well,
Whare Mungo’s mither hang’d hersel.
Before him Doon pours all his floods;
The doubling storm roars thro’ the woods;
The lightnings flash from pole to pole,
Near and more near the thunders roll;—
When, glimmering thro’ the groaning trees,
Kirk-Alloway seem’d in a bleeze;
Thro’ ilka bore [hole] the beams were glancing,
And loud resounded mirth and dancing.”
Well, Tam o’ Shanter was in a state of very great astonishment indeed, and so was I as soon as I turned a corner and opened out the terrace or green platform on which Donal’ Graat’s old-fashioned Highland hut was wont to stand.
For a few moments I thought I must be dreaming. The little table-land above the loch had been transformed into terraced gardens, and these, at this moment, were all brilliantly lit up with coloured lights and pretty Chinese lanterns, that hung from the shrubs and trees, and waved gently too and fro on the soft summer’s air.
Above all was the broad and well-lit balcony of a villa, and from this resounded not mirth and dancing, but mirth and music.
I did just as Tam o’ Shanter did—and had it been a crime to have done so, I believe I should have done it just the same—
“I ventur’d forward on the licht.”
Yes, I opened the gateway near a little pier that jutted out into the loch, and went up one flight of broad steps after another till I stood close beneath the veranda, dog at heel and gun under my arm. Not until I felt the glare of the lamp-light on my face, and knew that every eye was bent upon me, did I recognize the fact that my presence here was really an unwarrantable intrusion.
Those on the veranda may be briefly described as follows, for they were not numerous:—There were first two or three ladies of uncertain age, one seated on a footstool, the rest on light chairs; there was a brown-faced, good-looking man of probably fifty years of age, evidently a sailor every inch, leaning back in an easy arm-chair, and with a very large meerschaum in his hand and mouth. Not far off stood a most beautiful young girl, of probably fourteen or fifteen, holding a violin which she had been playing; and near her feet, reclining on a Highland plaid, was a young fellow, certainly not twenty, fondling a guitar.