Fanny and Edward listened breathlessly.
The bugle gave out its notes again in the well-known “call,” and as sweetly as before the notes were returned distinctly.
And now a soft and slow and simple melody stole from the exquisitely played bugle, and phrase after phrase was echoed from the responding hills. How many an emotion stirred within Edward's breast, as the melting music fell upon his ear! In the midst of matchless beauties he heard the matchless strains of his native land, and the echoes of her old hills responding to the triumphs of her old bards. The air, too, bore with it historic associations;—it told a tale of wrong and of suffering. The wrong has ceased, the suffering is past, but the air which records them still lives.
“Oh! triumph of the minstrel!” exclaimed Edward in delight. “The tyrant crumbles in his coffin, while the song of the bard survives! The memory of a sceptred ruffian is endlessly branded by a simple strain, while many of the elaborate chronicles of his evil life have passed away and are mouldering like himself.”
Scarcely had the echoes of this exquisite air died away, when the entrancement it carried was rudely broken by one of the vulgarest tunes being brayed from a bugle in a boat which was seen rounding the headland of the wooded promontory. Edward and Fanny writhed, and put their hands to their ears. “Give way, boys!” said Edward; “for pity's sake get away from these barbarians. Give way!”
Away sprang the boat. To the boatman's inquiry whether they should stop at “Lady Kenmare's Cottage,” Fanny said “no,” when she found on inquiry it was a particularly “show-place,” being certain the vulgar party following would stop there, and therefore time might be gained in getting away from such disagreeable followers.
Dinas Island, fringed with its lovely woods, excited their admiration, as they passed underneath its shadows, and turned into Turk Lake; here the labyrinthine nature of the channels through which they had been winding was changed for a circular expanse of water, over which the lofty mountain, whence it takes its name, towers in all its wild beauty of wood, and rock, and heath.
At a certain part of the lake, the boatmen, without any visible cause, rested on their oars. On Edward asking them why they did not pull, he received this touching answer:—
“Sure, your honour would not have us disturb Ned Macarthy's grave!”
“Then a boatman was drowned here, I suppose?” said Edward.