'Ah! my young friend, charity is good, but it must be according to knowledge.'
'But, Mrs. Sangster, the General is a most worthy man, a kind master and a good landlord, and an honourable gentleman.'
'I will not say, Mr. Roderick, that his hands are red with the blood of the saints, because it has not been left in his power to take the lives of the Lord's people; but he has been very bitter against the Free Church. We may fairly include him among the persecutors, driving us forth to worship God according to our conscience, on the bare hill-side, and refusing us a stance to build our church on any part of his property. Now, I have always said, that that open place facing Inchbracken gate is where our new church should stand. There it could testify before the very walls of the Erastian temple, instead of being huddled away in the corner of widow Forester's kale-yard.'
'But how would you like a Roman Catholic or even an Episcopal Chapel set down opposite your own gate at Auchlippie?'
'Mr. Roderick! Popery and Prelacy! To hear you evening our true scriptural protesting Free Church to the Babylonish apostacy, with their white gowns, and their organs, and their traditions of men! I fear there's a leaven of latitudinarianism among you younger men. You should follow the staunch old lights like Mr. Dowlas, to steady your principles. How you can recall the doings of Archbishop Sharp, and speak lightly of Episcopacy, is what I can't comprehend!'
They had now reached the last steep ascent which ended on the summit. This left the old lady no spare breath to hold forth, and she was glad to catch hold of Roderick's arm to assist in pulling herself up the nearly vertical slope. The wind-swept cairn at the top was at length reached, and, notwithstanding her late complaints, Mrs. Sangster was forced to shelter herself from the keen breeze, under its lee, and to resume the shawl she had discarded.
Craig Findochart rises high over the surrounding hills especially towards the east. On that side they gradually diminish and die away in the belt of cultivation that borders the sea. To the north is a narrow glen running down into a fertile strath well-wooded and watered by a river of some size; beyond, the lofty Highland mountains toss their battered summits in the air, a very sea of emulously-surging peaks. Westward it is mountainous again but more various. The eye travels far up more than one winding strath, while glancing lakes shine out every here and there among the greys and purples of mountain and moor. Southward the view is narrower and loses itself in haze, a greyness which rises indistinctly from the distant country, but when once fairly launched in heaven, swells and curls and rears itself into vast white battlements of cloud, and drifts before the wind shining and luminous, like some great iceberg in a transparent sea.
Having surveyed the view, the party sought such shelter from the chilling breeze as was attainable, on the leeward slope, and proceeded to rest and refresh themselves, after their fatigues; the old lady, with some elation at having climbed the hill as cleverly as the youngest, doing the honours of her provision basket with garrulous hospitality, while the others reclined on the scanty herbage with infinite zeal. The warmth gained by exercise withstood the sharp upper air, whose biting keenness felt only bracing and exhilarating to those toilers upward from the airless heat below; but after half an hour they had parted with the surplus heat gained by exertion, and began to feel distinctly cold. There seemed a failing too in the brightness of the light, except over the distant sea, which still glittered crisp and bright in unclouded sunshine. A wan greyness seemed to be stealing over the landscape, not as when passing clouds dapple the view with well defined blocks of shadow, but rather a diffused withdrawal of warmth and light all undefined and vague, but ever deepening like the stealthy advances of sickness or death upon a living thing. Looking upwards they now for the first time observe great vaporous arms and wreaths extending over their heads and stretching out towards the still bright heavens in the north-east. Turning round they find the outlook completely obliterated. The shining cloud-masses of an hour before in the south-west have drifted down upon them, and are now nothing but curling wreaths of cold damp mist, seething and twisting, but ever downward and onward. They seem scarcely to have descried overhead its first advancing arms ere it has descended on them and lapped them from the world in cold damp greyness, above, below, and all around them. From far down the hill ascends the report of a gun, and by and by another, telling them that others besides themselves are on the mountain, and that they are still upon firm ground; but for that they might be anywhere or nowhere, the mist hems them in utterly, the very ground they stand on becomes indistinct, and they stretch their arms to touch each other and make sure they are not each alone. They gather close together standing perfectly still, a step in any direction may precipitate them they know not whither, and the damp clammy vapour creeps close about them soaking hair and clothing, and chilling them to the bone.
'It is only a cloud and will soon pass,' some one says; so they agree it will be safer to wait than to attempt a descent not knowing where their next step may carry them. They huddle closely together and watch and shiver; at one moment it seems growing lighter overhead, and glimmerings of the bright sky shine through, but anon a surging wreath drifts up, and the promising rift closes in again denser than before.
For more than an hour they stood thus afraid to move, stiffening and shivering in the cold. The day was passing, but the mist showed no sign of rising; on the contrary it grew thicker and more wetting, and the idea of spending the night where they were, began to present itself as a possibility unless they made a bold venture to move. To die of cold where they were, appeared a certainty if they remained, while there was at least a hope of escape, in tempting the uncertain dangers of the descent.