"How came you to hear her music?" asked Innes, in a tone that showed he took but little interest in the query.
"Ah, there's a story belongs to that question," replied Sandy. "It's about a month or twa mair nor a twelvemonth noo, sin Tam M'Intyre and I set out frae Racoon Settlement, on ane o' the weariest and maist desperate journeys I have yet taen in America. About Christmas, a huntsman, in passing the settlement, tauld us there was to be a grand ball on New-year's Day at the Hawk River, and that there were to be four Scotch lassies at it, who had come owre the simmer afore, forbye a bonnie young leddie, the manager's sister. The River, ye ken, is no mickle aboon twa hundred miles frae Racoon Settlement, and Tam M'Intyre and I, who for five years hadna seen a living creature liker a woman than an Indian squaw, resolved on going to the ball, to see the lassies. We yoked our sledges on a snell frosty morning, set out across the great lake, and reached the log-house at Bear's Point about dark. We got up a rousin fire, and drunk maybe a glass or twa extra owre our cracks about Scotland and the lassies; but I'll tak my aith on't there was neither o' us meikle the waur. But, however it happened, about midnight we baith awakened mair nor half scomfisht, and there was the roof in a bright lowe aboon our heads. M'Intyre singed a' his whiskers and eebrees in getting out; I was luckier, and escaped wi' the loss only o' my blanket and our twa days' provisions. But we just couldna help it; and, yokin our dogs by the light o' the burnin, aff we set, weel aware that we wad baith miss our breakfasts or we reached the Hawk River. We travelled a' that day and a' the next nicht, the dogs hearty and strong, puir brutes, for we had been lucky aneugh to get the hinder half o' a black fox in a trap—the other half had been eaten by the wolves; but oursels, Innes, were like to famish. When mornin came, we were within thirty miles o' the Hawk River. There was little wind, but the frost burned like het iron. I dinna remember a sneller morning. M'Intyre had to thaw his nose three times, and my chin and ears had twice got as hard as bits o' stockfish. We had rubbed off a' the skin in trying to mak the blood circulate, and baith our faces had so swelled out o' the size, and shape, and colour o' humanity, that, when we reached the settlement, we were fain to steal into an outside hut, just that the lassies mightna see us. Man, but it was a sair begeck! The ball night came, and we were still uglier than ever, and I thought I wad hae gane daft wi' vexation. We could hear the noise o' the fiddles, and the dancin—and that was just a'. M'Intyre had some thoughts o' hangin himsel oot o' spite. Just when we were at the warst, however, a genteel tap comes to the door; and there there was a smart bonny lassie wi' a message to us frae her mistress, the manager's sister. We were asked down, she said; her mistress, hearing o' our misluck, and that we had baith come frae the north country, had got up a snug little supper for us, where there would be none to ferlie at us, and was noo waitin our comin. Was this no kind, Innes? I made a veil o' my plaid as I best could, M'Intyre muffled himself up in a napkin, and aff we went to the manager's. But, oh man! sic kindness frae sae sweet a leddy! She sang and played till us—and weel did it set her to do baith; and mixed up our toddy for us—for we were gey blate, as ye may think; and, on takin our leave, she shook hands wi' us as gin we had been her equals. I've never been fule aneugh to be in love, Innes—beggin your pardon for sayin sae—but I feel I could lay down my life for that bonny lassie ony day. Weel, but kindliness is a kindly thing!"
"What is the young lady's name?" inquired Innes, with some eagerness, as a sudden thought came across him. "Her brother, I think, calls her Catherine."
"Ah, no your Catherine, though," said Sandy; "the manager's name is Pringle, ye ken, and that's no Roberts."
"I am a fool," replied Innes, with a sigh; "and you see it, Sandy."
The track pursued by the party, which had hitherto lain along the edge of the lake, now ascended the steep wooded bank which hung over it, and, after winding for several miles through a series of shaggy thickets, with here and there an intervening swamp, opened into an extensive plain. A few straggling clumps of copsewood served to enliven the otherwise unvaried surface, and, in the far distance, there was a range of snowy hills that seemed to rise directly over a deep narrow valley in which the plain terminated. There was no wind, and a column of smoke, which issued from the centre of a distant wood, arose majestically in the clear sunshine, till, reaching a lighter stratum of air, it spread out equally on every side, like the foliage of a stately tree.
"Some Indian settlement," said the manager. "There is much of beauty in this wild scene, Mr Cameron—beauty merging into the sublime; and the poor red men, its sole inhabitants, form exactly the sort of figures one would choose to introduce into such a landscape. I am now much more a lover of such scenes than before my sister joined me."
"A taste for the wild and savage seems to be an acquired one," remarked Innes; "a taste for the beautiful is natural. Certainly the first comes later in life to the individual, and it is scarcely ever found among the uneducated. One of the finest wild scenes in Ross-shire—a deep, rocky ravine, overhung with wood, and with a turbulent Highland stream roaring through it—is known by all the country folk in the neighbourhood by the name of the Ugly Burn."
"The remark chimes in with my experience," said the manager. "I ever admired the beautiful; but it was Catherine who first taught me to admire the sublime. There is a savagely wild scene before us, where I can now spend whole hours in the fine summer evenings, but which I used to regard, only a few years ago, as positively a disagreeable one. But such scenes make ever the deepest impression, whether the mind be cultivated or no."
"Ay, Mr Pringle," remarked Sandy; "and frae that I draw my main consolation for havin spent sae mony o' my best years in gatherin skins for a wheen London merchants."