The Trossachs
In the late afternoon, under that matchless sky which the wind had swept clear of even rapid clouds—we were glad we could match it by no other Scottish sky, and only by the sky which shone down when we first came to the Lake, that æon ago—and by the scant two miles that lie between the Brig and the Lake, "stepping westward," we followed the far memory till it was present.
The road leads through the forest beautifully, peacefully. If on that early September day no birds sang, still one missed nothing, not even the horn of the Knight of Snowdoun. The paths twine and retwine, through this bosky birchen wood, with heather purple, and knee deep on either side, and through the trees swift glimpses of the storied mountains.
Suddenly the way changes, the ground breaks, rocks heap themselves, a gorge appears,—it is the very place!
"Dashing down a darksome glen,
Soon lost to hound and hunter's ken,
In the deep Trossachs' wildest nook
His solitary refuge took."
I can never forget the thrill I had in the old schoolroom when Mr. Kennedy first read the story and I knew that the stag had escaped. I felt even more certain of it in this wild glen. Surely he must be in there still. And so I refused to go and find him.
I could not discover where fell the gallant gray. I mean I was without guide and could map my own geography out of my own more certain knowledge. So I chose a lovely green spot—notwithstanding my remembrance of "stumbling in the rugged dell"—encircled with oak and birch, the shadows lying athwart it as they would write the legend.
"Woe worth the chase, woe worth the day,
That costs thy life, my gallant gray."
And then, by a very pleasant path, instead of the tortuous ladderlike way which James Fitz James was forced to take, I came again to The Lake, splendid in the evening as it had been mysterious in the morning.
"The western waves of ebbing day
Roll'd o'er the glen their level way;
Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
Was bathed in floods of living fire.
But not a setting beam could glow
Within the dark ravine below,
Where twined the path in shadow hid,
Round many a rocky pyramid,
Shooting abruptly from the dell
Its thunder-splintered pinnacle."