Lily walked on in thoughtful silence.
Meanwhile Tom had strayed far from the track, plunging knee-deep through heather and green cranberry scrub after butterflies, and alarming the oyster-catchers, which flew whistling and circling overhead, “tiring the echoes with unvaried cries,” and grouse, which went whirring and clamoring away up among the big grey boulders on the mountainside. The two sat down to wait for him.
“Every sight and sound here has a personality for me,” Macpherson said, looking across the valley, where along the brow of a scarped hollow lay white wreaths of snow, and a little cloud above it hung about the mountain-top, clinging as if it would fain wander no more across the pathless heaven.
“That little cloud, see how it clings—heaven-born though it is—to the barren earth. If it lingers there it must dissolve in rain and fall into that cold hollow which never sees the sun.”
Even as he spoke the cloudlet stirred, detached itself, and stole slowly away into the blue air.
“Ay!” he said to himself, with expressive intonation as he watched it; and then, bending his head while he held a piece of heather ungathered in his hand, he listened a minute. “Hark!” he said, raising his eyes with a dreamy smile. “Do you hear it?”
Far through the stillness of the sultry summer air came the murmur of water falling down its stony channel.
“It is the burn yonder—that green streak between the hills—tumbling down among the ferns. I used to fancy it mourned to leave its native fountains, and flowery sheltering banks, and the solitude of these mighty hills; but now it seems to me it feels a great destiny drawing it irresistibly onward, down to the forests below, through moor and meadow, to exchange the mountain echoes and the wild birds’ cry for the shriek and rattle of railways and the din of busy towns; to hurry onward, though it lose its early sweetness and receive many a foul stain as it goes to join the ocean, the mighty heart which draws it to itself, reaching which at last all its impurity shall be purged away.”
He was looking into the far horizon, where rank on rank of faint and fainter hills mingled with the clouds and blue sky, and seemed lost in thoughts beyond the words he had been speaking.
Lily’s glance rested on his spiritual face, and presently she sighed.