How can I bear it? Alexis is to take me to Petersburg, and he has bought a beautiful house in the Prospekt, and I am to live in it with him, and we are to be rich, and I am to be presented at the Court of Nicholas Romanoff and his wife. Ah! Is it not dreadful?
And I can only think of Otto floating down the stream with the easel about his neck. From the little river he will float into the Dnieper, and from the Dnieper into the Bug, and from the Bug he will float down the Volga, and from the Volga into the Caspian Sea. And from the Caspian Sea there is no outlet, and Otto will float round and round it for ever.
Is it not dreadful?
VII.
Hannah of the Highlands:
or, The Laird of Loch Aucherlocherty
“Sair maun ye greet, but hoot awa!
There’s muckle yet, love isna’ a’—
Nae more ye’ll see, howe’er ye whine
The bonnie breeks of Auld Lang Syne!”
The simple words rang out fresh and sweet upon the morning air.
It was Hannah of the Highlands. She was gathering lobsters in the burn that ran through the glen.
The scene about her was typically Highland. Wild hills rose on both sides of the burn to a height of seventy-five feet, covered with a dense Highland forest that stretched a hundred yards in either direction. At the foot of the burn a beautiful Scotch loch lay in the hollow of the hills. Beyond it again, through the gap of the hills, was the sea. Through the Glen, and close beside the burn where Hannah stood, wound the road that rose again to follow the cliffs along the shore.
The tourists in the Highlands will find no more beautiful spot than the Glen of Aucherlocherty.
Nor is there any spot which can more justly claim to be historic ground.