“It’ll be like my luck,” he muttered, “if I miss this train.”
But he did not miss it, and it was a fast one, too, a flying train, that every day went tearing along through Scotland, and was warranted to land him at Inverness six hours after he first stepped on board.
No sooner was Silas seated than he pulled out the telegram again, and read it over and over at least a dozen times. Then he looked at the back of it, as if it were just possible that some further information might be found there. Then he read the address, and as he could not get anything more out of it he folded it up and replaced it in his pocket, merely remarking, “I’ll vow something’s in the wind.”
Silas had bought a newspaper. He had meant to read; he tried to read as hard as ever he had tried to do anything, but it was all in vain. His mind was in too great a ferment, so he threw down the paper and devoted himself to gazing out of the window at the glorious panorama that was passing before him; but if anybody else had been in the same compartment, he or she would have heard this ancient mariner frequently muttering to himself, and the burden of all his remarks was, “Something’s in the wind, I’m sure of that!”
A fast train? A flying train? Yes, a deal too much so, many would have thought, but she could not fly a bit too fast for Silas. Yet how she did rattle and rush and roar along the lines, to be sure! The din she made only deepening for a moment as she dived under a bridge or brushed past a wayside station, too insignificant by far to waste a thought upon! Now she passes a country village, with rows of trim-built cottages and tidy gardens, with lines for clothes to dry, and fences where children hang or perch and wave their caps at the flying train. Now she shaves past rows of platelayers, who stand at attention or extend their grimy arms like signal yards, while a blue-coated jack-in-a-box waves a white flag from his window to show that all is safe. Now she ploughs through some larger junction, over a whole field of rails that seems to run in every conceivable direction; but she makes her way in safety in a whirl of dust, and next she shrieks as she plunges into the darkness of a long, dreary tunnel. Ah! but she is out again into the glare of the day, and again the telegraph posts go popping past as fast as one could wink. Five miles now on a stretch of level country as straight as crow could fly, through fields and woods and past thriving farms, with far beyond on the horizon hills, hills, hills.
’Tis spring-time, spring changing into summer, summer coming six good weeks before its time. Look, Silas, look! crimson flowers are already peeping red through the greenery of cornfields, drowsy-looking cows are wading knee-deep in grass and buttercups, the braelands are snowed over with the gowan’s bloom. Birds are singing in meadow and copse, the yellow furze is blossoming on heathy moorlands. Great black spruces raise their tall heads skywards, and their every branch is tipped with a tassel of tender green; rowan-trees seem studded with roses of a pearly hue, and the feathery larches are hung round with a fringe-work of darkest crimson. Is it not glorious, Silas? is it not all beautiful? Did ever you see a sky more blue before, or cloudlets more fleecy and light?
“I’ll stake my word,” replies Silas, “that something’s in the wind.”
Wilder scenery now, dark, frowning mountains, lonely glens, heathlands, highlands, cañons, and tarns, then a long and fertile flat, every sod of which marks a Scottish warrior’s grave.
Inverness at last!
“Boat gone, is it?” cried Silas. “Like my luck. But why didn’t she wait for the train? Tell me that, eh?”