A desperate feud of some years’ standing had made Donald the declared enemy of Robin’s father, old Harry the herd of the Limekilns, a cognomen which he had from the circumstance of his cottage being placed on the side of yonder hill of that name, so called from a prevailing tradition that the lime used in the building of the Castle of Loch-an-Dorbe was brought in the state of stone in creels on horses’ backs from the quarries near to Grantown, and burned there. Old Harry was a poor man and a herd, whilst Donald Rose was wealthy, and especially prided himself on being a Duniwassel, or small gentleman, so that there thus existed three most active awgents, to wit, enmity, avarice, and pride, which combined to compel him to put an instantaneous stop to all such proceedings between Robin Stuart and his daughter Mary. Without one moment’s delay, he thrust the young shepherd, head and shoulders, violently forth from his door, and smacking the palm of his hand significantly and with great force and birr on his dirk sheath, so as to cause the weepon to ring again—
“I’ll tell ye what it is, my young birkie,” said he, in a voice like thunder, “gif I catch ye again within haulf a mile o’ my dochter, ye sall ha’e a taste o’ sweetlips here! An’ as for you, Mary, an’ ye daur to let siccan a beggarly chield as that come within a penny stane cast o’ ye, by my saul but I’ll turn ye out ower my door hauld wi’ as leetle ceremony as I ha’e done the same thing to Rab himsell yonder!”
But, as one of the ancient heathen poets hath it, love is a fire which no storm can extinguish; it feeds itself with hope, and only burns the brighter the more it is blown against by adverse blasts. You know, gentlemen, how Pyramus and Thisbe contrived to hold secret converse together. Though Robin and Mary had no crack in a wall through which to pour the stream of their mutual love,—nay, although their respective dwellings were some mile or two separate from each other, yet many were the private meetings which the youth and maiden contrived to obtain, during which they employed their time in fostering their mutual hopes, and in strengthening their belief that better and happier days were yet in store for them. And happy indeed would have been those days of their anticipation, if they could have proved happier than were those stolen hours which they thus occasionally enjoyed together.
Now, it happened one beautiful day, in the beginning of summer, that Donald Rose rode off from his door to go to a distant market, whence there was no chance of his returning till late at night. The old saying hath it, that when the cat is away the mice will play. This was too favourable an opportunity to be lost by a pair of young lovers so quick-sighted as Robin and Mary. It had been marked by both of them for some weeks before it came; and the farmer’s long-tailed rough grey garron had no sooner borne his master’s bulky body in safety along the ticklish and treacherous path that went by a short cut through the long moss, and over the distant rising ground, than Robin Stuart, true to his tryst, appeared to escort his bonny lassie on a ramble of love. No one was at home to spy out their intentions but old Mysie Morrison, the good-natured hireling woman of all work; and she was too much taken up with her household affairs to trouble her head about watching the young lad and lass. Indeed, if she had thoughts of them at all, she was too much attached to her young mistress, and too well acquainted with her secret, and too shrewd to betray her either by design or by accident.
As you may see, gentlemen, there was no great choice of pleasure walks in this bleak destrick, but the two young creatures were so taken up with each other, and so full of joy in each other’s company, that the dreariest spot of it was as a rich and blooming garden in their delighted eyes. They tripped along merrily together, and bounded like roe deer over the heathery knolls, scarcely knowing, and not in the least caring, which way they went, until they found themselves by the side of the little lochan which we have but just left behind us. It was then the season when the wilderness of this upland country was clad in a mantle of wild flowers, and thereabouts especially they grew in so great variety and profusion that it seemed as if the goddess Flora had resolved to hold her court in that place. There, then, they resolved to rest a while; and Robin, producing the simple contents of a little wallet which he carried under his plaid, they sat down together and feasted luxuriously.
When they had finished their meal the lovers began to waste the hours in idle but innocent sport. They roamed about here and there, gathering the gaudy flowering plants that grew around them; and after filling their arms with these wildling treasures, they again seated themselves side by side, to employ their hands in arranging and plaiting them into rustic ornaments. Whilst thus occupied they were too happy and too much taken up with their own pleasing prattle to think of the progress of the sun, who was all this time most industriously urging his ceaseless journey over their heads, without exciting any of their attention, except in so far as his beams might have lent a livelier hue to the gay garlands they were weaving for each other, or yielded a fresher glow to the cheeks, or a brighter sparkle to the eyes, of those who were to wear them.
Whilst they were thus so happily and so harmlessly occupied, they went on, with all the innocent simplicity of rustic life, repeating over and over again to each other their solemn vows of eternal love and fidelity, as if they could never have been tired of these their sweet and sooth-fast asseverations, whilst, at the same time, they uttered them with a copiousness of phraseology and a variety of dialogue truly marvellous in such a muirland pair as they were. It would have absolutely astonished all your writers of novelles to have overheard them, and it would have puzzled any of these fiction-mongers to have invented the like.
“Oh that your father was but as poor and as humble as mine, Mary!” exclaimed the youth at last, “or, rich and proud as he is, that you could leave him and content yoursel’ wi’ bein’ a poor man’s wife!”
“Na, Robin!” replied she, shaking her head gravely, and then laying her hand upon his arm, and looking up wistfully into his eyes, “you would never ask me, my father’s ae bairn, to leave him noo that he has grown auld, and that my dear mother has left us baith and gane to heeven! Gif, indeed, he could be but brought to look wi’ a kind ee on you—then—then”—continued she, with a faultering tongue, whilst she blushed deeply, and threw her eyes down amidst the heap of flowers that lay at her feet,—“then, indeed, we might baith be his bairns.”
“Oh! I wish again that he were but a poor man!” cried Robin enthusiastically, “for then might thir twa arms o’ mine mak’ me as gude a match in his een as a’ the bit tocher he could gie might warrant him to look for. Weel and stoutly wad I work for sic a prize as you, Mary!”