But Blanche was in no mood for joking just then; she glided away towards the castle, and, finding her way to her room, she sat down at the window from which she had got her first glimpse of the glen.
The bright morning light had all vanished now, and the hills looked grey and solemn in the gathering twilight. A great silence seemed to have fallen on the moors. Blanche could hear no bleating of sheep, no cry of the moor-fowl, no merry whirring of wings; and, to her fanciful little brain, it seemed as if the valley were mourning for its dead, for the little birds that would never sleep on the heather again, or mount to the sky with the returning sun.
And as Blanche sat thinking in the gathering darkness, she got among those crooked things that cannot be made straight by any theories of ours, those mysteries which we must be content to leave to the wise love of Him who has told us that not a sparrow falls to the ground without the knowledge of that heavenly Father who had watched over this little girl always, counting her of more value than many sparrows.
Blanche was not sorry to have her reveries interrupted by her maid Ellis coming into the room, bringing lights with her. And as she laid out the pretty white frock and blue sash, in which Blanche was to be dressed for the evening, she said, "Well, missie, and how have you enjoyed your first day in the 'Ighlands of Scotland?—more than I've done, I hope? There's cook raging, fit to make one's life a burden about all those birds to pluck. She says it will just be game, game, right on now, till one feels ashamed to meet a bird."
"Oh! hush, Ellis. Please don't speak to me about those birds. I cannot get them out of my head. It does seem so very sad."
"Why, Miss Blanche, you're as bad as cook. For my part, I think they're uncommon good eating."
"It isn't that, Ellis; but only think how happy they all were this morning among those hills, and now—I wonder how papa could do it! It does seem so cruel."
"Come now, missie, that's what I won't stand to hear noways—the master called cruel! A more kinder 'arted gentleman don't step. He wouldn't hurt a fly—that he wouldn't. You'll be a callin' my old father a murderer next, because he's a butcher, I suppose, missie?"
"Oh! that's quite different, Ellis," said Blanche, apologetically. "But, to be sure, what lots of killing there is! It does seem very dreadful, when one thinks of it."
"Well, missie, you don't think it dreadful to eat a mutton-chop when you are hungry, I'll warrant." And this retort seemed quite unanswerable at the moment; so Ellis had the last word, as the last curl was adjusted, and her little mistress descended to join her father and his guests in the drawing-room.