As he sat on the grass, sketching this unfamiliar landscape, with the silent figure by his side, manipulating his line, and the rush of the water in his ears like a new language, Lewis could not but smile to himself at the strange revolution in his own thoughts and surroundings. His connections had been entirely urban. Old historical towers, churches, and palaces had been the shrines at which he had paid his devotions. Of Nature he knew next to nothing, and to think that his first acquaintance with her should be made on the banks of the Tay was strange indeed. The Tiber would have been more likely, that yellow stream to which its sons paid a most undeserved compliment when they hailed the noble Tay as its resemblance. But there was something in the coolness and sweetness of this still hour which moved Lewis strangely. He had been more used to the cicali in the trees than to the endless twitter of the northern woods, the perpetual concert in which "the mavis and the merle were singing," and to avoid the grass as perhaps full of snakes, and to fear the sun as it is feared where its fury gives sudden death. He sat in the full blaze of it now with a pleased abandonment of all precautions. It was altogether like a pleasant dream.
"Is that a house behind the cliff high up among those trees?" he said. He could not help thinking of a similar corner of old masonry peering through the olive groves on a slope of the Apennines; but how different this was! "And who may live there, I wonder?" he added, pausing to look sideways at his sketch, in the true artistic pose.
Adam was very busy at that moment; he gave a sort of oblique glance upwards from the corner of his eyes, but he was struggling with his first fish, which was far too important a crisis to be mixed up with talk, or vain answers to useless questions. It was not till he had pulled out his prize, and deposited the glistening, gasping trout upon the grass with a grunt of fatigue and satisfaction, that he took any notice of what his companion said. Lewis got up to look at it as it leaped its last in a convulsive flutter. He was no sportsman—indeed, he was so little of his race that the sight of dying was painful to him even in this uninteresting example. But he knew better than to show this.
"That's a fine ane," said Adam—"no so big as mony, but a strong creature; he has most strained my wrist wi' his acteevity. Ye were asking what house is yon. It is old Stormont Tower, a bit poor place, but as old as the hills themselves. You that makes pictures, did ye ever see a bonnier picture than that?"
"Is it for the value of the fish or the pleasure of catching it," said Lewis, "that you put a stop to its enjoyment? That's a more pleasant picture, I think," and he pointed to the sudden gleam of a salmon leaping in the middle of the stream.
Adam cast a glance at him of mingled curiosity and disdain.
"I said ye were nae fisher the first look I got at ye," he said. "And ye find more pleasure in making scarts upon paper than in sport?" he added, a minute after, in a solemn tone.
"At least, the scarts on the paper do no one any harm," said Lewis, laughing. But he acknowledged the ineffectualness of his occupation by forthwith putting away his sketch-book.
Adam saw this too with the corner of his eye, and apparently was mollified by the withdrawal of that peaceful competitor Art from the regions sacred to a stouter occupation. After a while, he spoke again,
"Sport," he said, "I'll no deny, is a mystery. That ye should take your pleasure in what's pain and death to another poor creature, maybe just as good as yoursel'—it's a real funny thing when you come to think o't. I can gi'e no explanation. I've taken mony a thought on the subject mysel'. That's how we're made, I suppose—to see the thing fecht for its life, that's your pleasure, and to battle wi' 't and get the upper hand. I canna be sorry for a trout," he said, casting a slow glance at the fish; "it's just made for a man's dinner, and that's the short and the long of it; but a deer, now—a grand creature, carrying yon muckle horns like a king his crown, and a wheen skulking murderers lying in wait for him, letting fly when the poor beast comes up unsuspecting! I'm not a deer-stalker," said Adam, with more simplicity than philosophy, making up