CHAPTER XIII.
HOME.
Hail, land of spearmen! seed of those who scorn'd
To stoop the proud crest to imperial Rome!
Hail! dearest half of Albion sea-wall'd!
Hail! state unconquer'd by the fire of war,—
Red war that twenty ages round thee blazed!
Albania.
Some thoughts such as these which inspired this now forgotten Scottish bard filled the swelling heart of Florence Fawside, as he urged his horse up the winding way which led to his paternal tower. The morning sun had now risen brightly above the long pastoral ridges of the Lammermuir, and he could see the widening Forth, with all its rocky isles, and the long sweep of sandy beach which borders the beautiful bay that lies between the mouth of the Esk and the green links of Gulane, whereon, in those days, there stood an ancient church of St. Andrew, which William the Lion gifted unto the monks of Dryburgh. The blue estuary was studded by merchant barks and fisher craft, with their square and brown lug-sails, beating up against the ebb tide and a gentle breeze from the west.
The sky was of a light azure tint, flecked by floating masses of snowy cloud, which, on their eastern and lower edges, were tinged with burning gold.
The hottest days of the summer were now gone, the pastures had become somewhat parched, and the shrivelled foliage that rustled in the woods of Carberry seemed athirst for the rains of autumn. Amid the coppice, the corn-craik and the cushat dove sent up their peculiar notes. The corn-fields were turning from pale green to a golden brown; and, as the morning breeze passed over it, the bearded grain swayed heavily to and fro, like ripples on the bosom of a yellow lake. The white smoke curled from the green cottage roofs of moss and thatch; the blue-bonneted peasants were at work in the sunny fields—the women with their snooded hair, or their white Flemish curchies (that came into fashion when James II. espoused Mary the Rose of Gueldres), were milking the cattle, grinding their hand-mills, or busy about their little garden-plots; and to Florence all seemed to illustrate his country, and speak to his heart with that love of home, which then, even more than now, was the purest passion of the Scottish people, and which, in all their wanderings, they never forget, however distant the land in which their lot in life may be cast.
Florence felt all this as he spurred up the green braeside, and heard the people in his mother-tongue cry, "God him speed;" for though they knew him not, they saw that he was a handsome youth, a stranger, nobly mounted and bravely apparelled.
Every step he took brought some old recollection to his heart. The gurgling brooks in which he had fished and the leafy thickets in which he had bird-nested, the old trees up which he had clambered, were before him now, and the days of his boyhood, the familiar voices and faces of his slaughtered father and brother, came vividly to memory. The song of a farmer who was driving his team of horses to the field, the lowing of the cattle, the barking of the shepherds' collies, the perfume of the broom and the harebell on the upland slope, all spoke of country and of home. But with this emotion others mingled.
With all the genuine rapture of a boyish lover, he kissed again and again his opal ring, the gift of that beautiful unknown, who had filled his heart with a secret joy and given life a new impulse.
"What can its secret be? Oh! to unravel all this mystery!" he exclaimed to himself a hundred times; but the ring baffled all his scrutiny and ingenuity.
He had now four projects to put in force immediately after his return home.