The day, I remember, was one of surprising brightness, clear, sunshiny, and soft as midsummer. There are few ways I know better than that from the capital to my home—the bare, windy moorlands for one half, and the green glens and pleasant waters of the other. It was by this road that I had come to Leith to ship for Holland; by this road that I had ridden on that wild night ride to Dawyck. Each spot of the wayside was imprinted on my memory, and now that my wanderings were over, and I was returning to peace and quiet, all things were invested with a new delight. Yet my pleasure was not of the brisk, boisterous order, for my many misfortunes had made me a graver man, and chastened my natural spirits to a mellow and abiding cheerfulness.
At Leadburn was the inn where I had first met my servant Nicol, my trusty comrade through so many varying fates. I drank a glass of wine at the place for no other cause than a sentimental remembrance. The old landlord was still there, and the idle ostlers hung around the stable doors, as when I had passed before. Down in the bog-meadow the marsh-marigolds were beginning to open, and the lambs from the hillside bleated about their mothers. The blue, shell-like sky overhead arched without a cloud to the green, distant hills.
When I came to the place on the Tweedside road, called the Mount Bog, I dismounted and lay down on the grass. For there the view opens to the hills of my own countryside. A great barrier of blue, seamed with glens, all scarred in spots with rock and shingle, lifting serene brows from the little ridges to the wide expanse of the heavens. I named them one by one from east to west—Minchmoor, though it was hidden from sight, where fled the great Montrose after the fatal rout of Philiphaugh; the broad foreheads of the Glenrath heights above my own vale of Manor, Dollar Law, Scrape, the Drummelzier fells, the rugged Wormel, and, fronting me, the great Caerdon, with snow still lining its crannies. Beyond, still further and fainter lines of mountain, till like a great tableland the monstrous mass of the Broad Law barred the distance. It was all so calm and fragrant, with not a sound on the ear but the plash of little streams and the boom of nesting snipe. And above all there was the thought that now all peril had gone, and I was free to live as I listed and enjoy life as a man is born to do, and skulk no more at dyke-sides, and be torn no longer by hopeless passion.
When I rode through the village of Broughton and came to the turn of the hill at Dreva, the sun was already westering. The goodly valley, all golden with evening light, lay beneath me. Tweed was one belt of pure brightness, flashing and shimmering by its silver shores and green, mossy banks. Every wood waved and sparkled in a fairy glow, and the hills above caught the radiance on their broad bosoms. I have never seen such a sight, and for me at that hour it seemed the presage of my home-coming. I have rarely felt a more serene enjoyment, for it put me at peace with all the earth, and gilded even the nightmare of the past with a remembered romance. To crown it there was that melodious concert of birds, which one may hear only on such a night in this sweet time o' year. Throstles and linnets and the shriller mountain larks sang in the setting daylight, till I felt like some prince in an eastern tale who has found the talisman and opened the portals of the Golden Land.
Down the long, winding hill-path I rode, watching the shadows flit before me, and thinking strange thoughts. Fronting me over the broad belt of woodland, I saw the grey towers of Dawyck, and the green avenues of grass running straight to the hill.
By and by the road took me under the trees, among the cool shades and the smell of pine and budding leaves. There was a great crooning of wood-doves, and the sighing of the tenderest breezes. Shafts of light still crept among the trunks, but the soft darkness of spring was almost at hand. My heart was filled with a great exaltation. The shadow of the past seemed to slip from me like an old garment.
Suddenly I stopped, for somewhere I heard a faint melody, the voice of a girl singing. 'Twas that voice I would know among ten thousand, the only one in all the world for me. I pulled up my horse and listened as the notes grew clearer, and this was what she sang:
"First shall the heavens want starry light,
The seas be robbèd of their waves;
The day want sun, the sun want bright,
The night want shade, and dead men graves;
The April, flowers and leaf and tree,
Before I false my faith to thee.
To thee, to thee."
There came a pause, and then again, in the fragrant gloaming, the air went on:
"First shall the tops of highest hills
By humble plains be overpry'd;
And poets scorn the Muses' quills,
And fish forsake the water-glide;
And Iris lose her coloured weed
Before I fail thee at thy need."