“Where shall I drive, Lady Breadalbane?”
“To Scotland—to the Highlands—to Glencoe! Glencoe!”
She flings herself back on the seat and the door is closed; over her hand hangs the yellow curl and the winter night has fallen in chaos about her.
“To Glencoe! Glencoe!”
CHAPTER XXV
GLENCOE
It was midday of the thirteenth of February and the snow clouds were blowing up over the Valley of Glencoe.
The whole landscape, encompassed by vast and steep mountains, lay in a cold, leaden gray light, there was no human being in sight and the only living thing visible was the solitary eagle that circled in and out of the fissures in the hills. The clouds rested like a girdle round the mountains, the sides and summits of which showed rifts of the pure melted snow. There were many entries to the valley, desolate winding pathways between the hills, steep avenues, twisting down the rocks; and from the mouth through the center ran a flat and silent stream.
There was no sign of the nearing of the spring; it seemed the very depth of winter; the grass and trees were withered to a uniform tint of grayness; the vastness of the scene made it awful, its silence made it melancholy beyond expression, humanity appeared to have no place in this loneliness; the cry of the eagle echoed like a dismal warning to all who would intrude on his desolate domain and the silence seemed the greater as his scream fell to stillness.
Descending into the valley by its mouth were two people: a shepherd wrapped in a heavy plaid and a woman on a Highland pony. As the valley closed round them, she raised her face constantly to the sky and the mountain tops as if their rugged splendor pleased her; her face was pale and of a calm nobility in the expression; her brown eyes held an intense look and her curved mouth was firmly set; her gray hood and her heavy, dull brown hair showed off the pure lines of her uplifted square chin and full throat; she took little heed of her companion, a tall gloomy Highlander and when her gaze was not on the stormy sky it was directed down the desolate Glen.
Once she said: