The purple radiance of the set sun yet lingered on the heath-clad summits of the distant hills, whose long and wavy line spread far away to the westward; and every feature in the landscape, and every sound that fell on the ear, spoke to me of home, and filled my heart with a strange combination of joy and sadness.
Since those days, a railway has effected a great change in our little village. Now, an excursion train shoots ten thousand passengers through it at the rate of forty miles per hour. Then, its visitors were few. The war-worn soldier, travelling afoot with his knapsack, and with his memories of Granby, Cornwallis, and Abercrombie; the Heights of Abraham, and the Bay of Aboukir; the old familiar pedlar with his pack of trinkets and his blarney; the swarthy and uncouth gipsies, who made horn spoons and milking-pails; or the weary wayfarer with his proverbial staff and bundle, came there at times, leisurely, slowly, and surely; pausing on the brow of the hill, ere they descended into the densely-wooded valley, where the red mountain burn brawled hoarsely under an old bridge of the monkish times, or halted to drink a stoup of brown ale, or of limpid usquebaugh, at the old village inn, ere they pushed further on their journey into the busier world beyond.
Now, a giant viaduct, that might remind one of Rome or of Tivoli, save that its numerous arches are built of flaming red brick, spans, high in air, the wooded dell, leaping, as it were, from hill to hill; and then the huge train clatters and screams with its flaring red lights and brass-mounted engine, as it tears along with its living freight, or with countless trucks of luggage,—on, on, and on, as with a roar like thunder, it vanishes into the bowels of a tunnelled mountain. In those days, a newspaper which came once weekly, to the minister, served to inform the whole village of the doings of "the Corsican tyrant;" of the battle of Camperdown, and the glories of Trafalgar; but now, we heard how the Guards and Highlanders went up the heights of Alma, and of the valour of "the thin red streak" at Balaclava, as soon as the citizens of the great metropolis,—for we have our own electric wire as well as they.
Strange as it may seem in these our days of cheap postage and swift communication, in consequence of the wandering life I had led, and the desultory nature of our operations by land and sea in the Antilles, I had never heard from my home since leaving it, nor had any letters of mine been received; and thus, with a heart swollen by anxiety and mournful recollections, I made a rapid survey of the scene, dreading—I knew not what!
An aged thorn-tree that had overhung the road for centuries, and whereon many an outlaw had swung in the times of old—a tree whose gnarled branches I was wont to climb, had been cut down, and its absence gave me a shock, so sensitive did vague apprehension make me. The roads and paths were all familiar as the faces of old friends; in boyhood I had traversed them a thousand times, seeking bird-nests, rabbit-holes, and scarlet berries in autumn.
The old manse recalled Dr. Twaddel the minister, with his white hair, his curved paunch, and his old bunch of red gold seals that hung thereat—and my poor mother's visit to him about me. How sadly I smiled when thinking of his monitory tones!—and there too, was the ancient church with its ivy-shrouded belfry, wherein an owl nestled by day and screamed by night. The old village signboards, and the old village sounds were around me; and now I was at the gate of the garden, in which Lotty and I used to plant flowers and shrubs—shrubs that had since grown to veritable trees; and now after all my wanderings, after ploughing the great deep, and having had the roar of battle in my ear, and seen the colours of the Fusiliers riven to rags by shot and shell, I felt like a boy again when standing on my mother's threshold.
I was close to the first starting-place of the soul, yet my heart sank within me!
I was so full of anxious thoughts, that Haystone (rightly dreading lest strangers instead of friends might meet me) hastily rang the bell, and after speaking to a servant, returned, saying cheerily—
"All right, my boy—the old lady is alive and well."
"Thank God!" said I, as we were ushered in.