She looked about her, and the wind whispered and rustled and laughed a little down among the elms and the hazels, while out towards the river and on a level with her face the silver birches shook their plumes daintily as a pretty girl her wandering tresses, bending saucily toward the water as they did so. Then Elspeth said the first two verses of "Mary's Dream" over to herself. The poem was a favourite with her father, a hard stern man with a sentimental base, as is indeed very common in Scotland.
"The moon had climbed the highest hill
That rises o'er the source of Dee,
And from the eastern summit shed
Her silver light on tower and tree.
When Mary laid her down to sleep,
Her thoughts on Sandy far at sea,
There soft and low a voice was heard,
Saying, 'Mary, weep no more for me!'"
Elspeth was young and she was not critical. Lowe's simple and to the modern mind somewhat obvious verse, seemed to her to contain the essence of truth and feeling. But on the other hand she looked adorable as she said them. For, strangely enough, a woman's critical judgment is generally in inverse ratio to her personal attractions—though doubtless there are exceptions to the rule.
As has been said, she did not go to Lowe's Seat for any particular purpose. She said so to herself as many as ten times while she was crossing in the skiff, and at least as often when she was pulling herself up the steep braeface by the supple hazels and more stubborn young oaks.
So Elspeth Stuart continued to hum a vagrant tune, more than half of the bars wholly silent, and the rest sometimes loud and sometimes soft, as she glanced downwards out of her green garret high among the leaves.
More than once she grew restive and pattered impatiently with her fingers on her lap as if expecting some one who did not come. Only occasionally she looked down towards the river. Indeed, she permitted her eyes to rove in every direction except immediately beneath her, where through a mist of leaves she could see the Dee kissing murmuringly the rushes on its marge.
A pretty girl—yes, surely. More than that, one winsome with the wilful brightness which takes men more than beauty. And being withal only twenty years of her age, it may well be believed that Elspeth Stuart, the only daughter of the parish minister of Dullarg, did not move far without drawing the glances of men after her as a magnet attracts steel filings.
Yet a second marvel appeared beneath. There was a young man moving along by the water's edge and he did not look up. To all appearance Lowe's Seat might just as well not have existed for him, and its pretty occupant might have been reading Miss Austen under the pines of the Kirk Knowe on the opposite side of Dee Water.
Elspeth also appeared equally unconscious. Of course, how otherwise? She had plucked a spray of bracken and was peeling away the fronds, unravelling the tough fibres of the root and rubbing off the underleaf seeds, so that they showed red on her fingers like iron rust. Wondrous busy had our maid become all suddenly. But though she had not smiled when the youth came in sight, she pouted when he made as if he would pass by without seeing her. Which is a strange thing when you come to think of it, considering that she herself had apparently not observed him.
Suddenly, however, she sang out loudly, a strong ringing stave like a blackbird from the copse as the sun rises above the hills. Whereat the young man started as if he had been shot. Hitherto he had held a fishing-rod in his hand and seemed intent only on the stream. But at the sound of Elspeth's voice he whirled about, and catching a glimpse of bright apparel through the green leaves, he came straight up through the tangle with the rod in his hand. Even at that moment it did not escape Elspeth's eye that he held it awkwardly, like one little used to Galloway burn-sides. She meant to show him better by-and-by.