Ronald snatched the letters, and beheld with joy and delight that one was from Alice,—the other from his father.
"Poor Louis!" muttered he aloud; "how much I wish that he was here!" Ronald was absolutely trembling with joy as he opened the letter and prepared to read it.
He drew his chair close to the table, and raised the snuffers to trim the candles; when, lo! the lights were both blown out, and the snuffers flew from his hand with a loud report.
"Gude guide us!" exclaimed Evan, astonished at being so suddenly involved in darkness; but a hearty malediction escaped Ronald, who was chafed and infuriated with the delay this unexpected circumstance caused.
"Light them again," cried he. "Did you say that Major Campbell had been waiting for me in this room?"
"Ay, sir, a gay gude while,"
"Pshaw! this is some trick of his: he has put a pinch of powder in the snuffers. His practical joke has been somewhat mis-timed. Get me fresh lights." Although Ronald laughed heartily at this occurrence afterwards, he was greatly enraged by it at the time, and an age seemed to elapse before Evan brought him the candles again. Love-letters are interesting to those only for whom they are designed, and it is not my intention to give Miss Lisle's letter at length; but the reader, if concerned about the matter, may be assured that its contents were in every way just what Ronald could have wished them,—save in one part. She expressed her joy to hear that Louis was a prisoner, saying that he was "safer in France than fighting in Spain," and that she almost wished that Ronald himself might be captured likewise, to keep him out of harm's way.
"Evan, Jessie Cavers begs again to be remembered to you," said Ronald to his expectant follower, as he closed the letter.
"Does she really, noo? The dear lassie!" cried he, snapping his fingers, while his eyes glistened with delight; and he commenced a sort of strathspey round the table. "My ain bonnie blithesome Jessie! Mony a gloaming I have spent wi' her among the sauch-tree woods o' Inchavon, and the haughs o' the Isla. Deil tak the wars and campaigning! How blithely would I gie this unco land o' teuch beef and rotten nuts, hard fechtin and wearysome marching, for auld Scotland, sae brave and sae bonnie, wi' its green grassy glens and high heather hills, its lochs and its woods! Ochone! Oh, Maister Ronald! gin we once mair saw Benmore, and fand the smell o' oor ain peat reek, I dinna think we would be in a hurry to leave hame again. And then Miss Lisle o' the big ha' house would be your ain, and my bonnie doo Jessie mine! I have written to her three times, and deil a scrap o' a letter has she sent me. She writes weil aneugh, thanks to the auld dominie at the schule o' Latheronweel. But what does the laird say? Are a' weil at oor ain ingle-neuck?"
"All, Heaven be thanked!" replied Ronald, glancing rapidly over the pages of his father's letter; "but leave me just now, Evan, and see who that is knocking in the piazzas below. I will detail the news from the glen afterwards."