Part 9 (1/2)
Last night, ere gloaming fell, Kenneth had stood at his mother's cottage door for hours watching the sunset and the weird but splendid after-glow.
The sun had gone down rosy red and large behind a grey-blue bank of rock-and-tower clouds that bounded the horizon above the hills. But so strange and beautiful was the colour that soon spread over the firmament, with its tints of lavender, yellow, pink, and pale sea-green, that even Kenneth's mother must hold up her hands and cry,--
”Oh! dear laddie, a sky like that, I fear, bodes no good to the glen.”
For uppermost in every one's mind in Glen Alva, at the present time, was the threatened eviction.
Then, just one hour afterwards, the pink colour had disappeared from the sky, and the yellow had changed to one of the reddest, fieriest orange hues ever eyes had looked upon; while away farther round towards the north the sky was an ocean of darkest green. The trees, ashes and elms, that bordered a field adjoining the kail-yard, stood strangely out against this glow; every branchlet and twig seemed traced in ink--the blackest of the black.
Above this orange, or rather through its upper edge, where it went melting into the zenith's blue, the stars glimmered green.
But looking earthward, all around the hills and fields were dark and bare, for winter had not yet donned her mantle of snow.
And now Kenneth has come out of doors almost before the sun is risen, for there are fowls to be fed, and rabbits and guinea-pigs, and the cow herself to be seen to, before he takes his own breakfast and starts to meet Dugald to enjoy a day among the hills.
What a change! The h.o.a.r frost has been falling gently all the livelong night. The good fairies seem to have been at work while others slept, changing the world to what he now sees it, and so silently too. And this is what strikes Kenneth as so wonderful: while shrub, and tree, and weeds, and gra.s.s, and heather, are transformed, as it were, into powdered ice, there is neither loss of shape nor form; not a branch bends down; not a leaf or twig is out of place. And the very commonest of objects, too, are turned to marvels of beauty.
The trees point heavenwards with fingers of coral. But to look lower down. Surely there could be no romance or beauty about a cabbage leaf.
Glance at these then fringed all round with needles and spiculae inches long; the leaf itself is a s.h.i.+mmering green, dusted over with a frosty down. The wire-netting around the poultry run, and the cobwebs that depend from outhouse eaves, are s.h.i.+ny silver lace-work all. A glorious morning, a wondrous scene; why, even the humble clothes line is changed into a white and feathery cable, and the tufts of gra.s.s that grow on the pathways are tufts of gra.s.s no longer, but radiant bunches of snow-white feathers.
Adown the glen, where Kenneth wanders at last, everything around him is of the same magical beauty, a beauty that is increased tenfold when he reaches the woods. Here, too, all is silence, only the murmur of the rippling stream, or the peevish twitter of birds, or the complaining notes of a throstle as she flies outwards from a thicket, scattering the silvery powder all around her.
But down here in the wood, through the dazzling white of the pine trees, the cypresses, and spruces and holly, comes a shade, a s.h.i.+mmer of green, brighter among the pines themselves, darker among the ivy that clings to their stems. And the seed b.a.l.l.s on the ivy itself are globes of feathery snow, and every spine on the holly leaves is a fairy plume.
Hark! the sound of ringing footsteps on frost-hard road, and a manly merry voice singing,--
”Cam' ye by Athol, lad wi' the philibeg, Down by the Tummel and banks o' the Garry?
Saw ye the lad wi' his bonnet and white c.o.c.kade, Leaving his mountains to follow Prince Charlie?”
--And next moment, gun on shoulder, st.u.r.dy Dugald the keeper stalks round the corner.
”The top of the mornin' to ye, man,” said Dugald. ”Have you seen Archie?”
”No, not yet.”
But even as they spoke Archie, bare-headed as usual, is seen coming up from the side of the stream, with a string of beautiful mountain trout in his hand.
He climbed up through the icy ferns, leapt the fence, and stood before them.
”I set twenty lines last night,” he said, in joyful accents, ”and caught thirteen trout.”
Back the trio went to Mrs McAlpine's cottage, and those fish were fried for breakfast, with nut-brown tea, cream, and b.u.t.ter and cakes; and if there be anything in this world better for breakfast than mountain trout fresh from a stream, I trust some kind soul will send me a hamper of it.
What a day of it they had among the hills, to be sure!
Young as he was, Kenneth had a gun, while Archie did duty as ghillie; they went miles and miles away up among the mountains where the heather grew high as their waists--Kenneth's waist and Dugald's, I mean; it was often over Archie's head. But they came out of this darkness at last, and shook the snow off their jackets and kilts, and walked on over the moorland.
Gorc.o.c.ks stretched their red necks and stared at them in wonder.
Ptarmigans, too cold to fly, ran and hid in the heather, the black c.o.c.k and the grey hen often flew past them with a wild whirr-r-r, while far above, circling round and round in the blue sunny sky, was the bird of Jove himself.