"Well, Flora, what do you think of Lord Rae's country?" said Lyndsay.
"It is terrific!" returned Flora; "I cannot look at that confusion of hills, lifting their tall heads to heaven, but I fancy that the earth has rebelled against her Maker, and dares to defy Him to his face. It is odd—a strange madness, you will think—but the sight of these mountains thrills me with fear. I feel myself grow pale while looking at them, and tremble while I admire."
"To me, born among the hills, Flora, these sensations of yours are almost incomprehensible. But look, that broken arch of stone formed by those immense black rocks round which the wild waves revel, and leap in a glad frenzy, is the entrance to Loch Gribol. It is one of the grandest objects on this rugged coast."
How often amid the dark woods of Canada did the stern sublimity of that awful scene return to Flora Lyndsay in her dreams! The barren coast of Anticosti, the pine-covered precipices of freestone that frown over Chaleur Bay, and the mountain range which extends on the north of the St. Lawrence from the Gulf to Quebec, though they present every variety of savage scenery, cannot compete with the lonely, sterile grandeur which marks the dashing of the ocean waves into that Highland loch.
The long, bright summer day wore to its close, and before the moon looked down upon the heath-clad hills, the lighthouse on Cape Wrath had diminished to a star amid the waves, and the coast of Scotland looked like a dim wreath of blue smoke upon the verge of the horizon.
The little islands of Barra and Rona dimly distinguished above the waves, were the last of the British Isles which met Flora's anxious glance; and when they faded into the immensity of ocean, and were lost to sight, and the vessel fairly stood to sea, a sense of loneliness, of perpetual exile, pressed so heavily upon her heart, that she left the deck, and sought her bed, that she might bewail in solitude her last passionate adieu to her native land.
CHAPTER IV.
STEPHEN CORRIE.
Now that the fear of detection was over, the little brown man fearlessly emerged from his hiding-place in the boat, and promenaded the deck from morning till night, sneering at the steerage-passengers, and abusing the sailors in the most arrogant and assured manner.