Looking through my field-glasses to discover the meaning of a column of dense smoke, which seemed to be rising from a hill in the distance, I found myself gazing at a forest in flames! Fire—a very wall of fire—seemed to extend for miles along a dense tract of woodland! So seemingly fierce the blaze that it lighted up with golden gleams the tower of a distant church beyond the wood! Yet, as I looked steadily, it became evident that the flames neither diminished nor increased; presently I discovered that the column of smoke rose from a spot entirely different—more to the foreground. In the end I had to confess with reluctance that my eyes had been deceived; there was no sensational forest fire at all! What I had seen was but the sunshine on an expanse of yellow bloom on some rising ground beyond the belt of woodland, and on the old church tower, while a rare cloud shaded the nearer prospect.
What a silly goat I called myself! Looking nearer home I saw the same red-gold glow, which needed but the sunshine to wake it into flame. The disused quarry, not half a mile away, where the sun was bright, might have been an open gold mine—so brilliant the shining of its wealth of broom bushes! The hedge of gorse which bordered the road on both sides had no speck of green to mar its splendor.
"All the world is turning golden, turning golden.
Gold butterflies are light upon the wing;
Gold is shining through the eyelids that were holden
Till the spring."
The graceful verse haunted me all that day, repeating spontaneously, again and again, its tuneful refrain. For up at Ardmuirland we have to wait till May for settled springtide.
Later on I strolled across to her cottage to have a chat with "Bell o' the Burn." I found her busy at her washtub on the threshold of the door, but none the less ready to enter into conversation, as I leaned on the garden fence watching her tireless pink hands, as they worked up the snowy soapsuds.
"You've maybe haird the news, sir?" she began, a note of inquiry in her tone.
I had seen yesterday's Scotsman, but not in those pages did any of our folk look for news. They read—those, at least, who possess that accomplishment—the stories in the People's Friend and the like, if they were young; those who were older scanned the columns of the local newspaper, published in the county town, and believed firmly in the absolute truth of everything that was asserted there. But "news" meant something more intimate—something which affected our own immediate circle by its relation to the daily life and interests of those around us.
So, knowing this, I did not dream about any startling political crisis, recent mining disaster, or railway collision; Bell knew nothing about such events. Experience had taught me to allow her to enlighten me in her own way. So I put a question to that end.
"Have you heard some news?" I said.
Bell's delight at being first in the field was evident.