prey. That, say we, is true Christian poetry, and then expressed in what powerful words! "Ev'n you on murdering errands toil'd, Each syllable tells-each stroke of the poet-painter's pencil depicts the life and sufferings of the poor beast of prey! And then, feeling that at such an hour all life is subject to one lot, how profound the pathos reflected back upon our own selves and our mortal condition, by these few simplest words They go to help the "ourie cattle" and the " silly sheep;" but who knows that they are not sent on an errand of higher mercy, by Him whose ear has not been shut to the prayer almost frozen on the lips of them about to perish! A tale of truth and tears, long forgotten, comes across our heart-long forgotten, though on the eve of that day on which the deliverance happened, so passionately did we all regard it, that we felt that interference provi dential-as if we had indeed seen the hand of God stretched down through the mist and snow from heaven! We all said that it would never all our lives long desert our memory. But all of us forgot it-and now, while the tempest howls, it seems again but of yesterday! One family lived in Glencreran, and another in Glenco -the families of two brothers-seldom visiting each other on working days, for their sheep mingled not on the hill; seldom meeting even on sabbaths, for theirs was not the same parish-kirk; and seldom coming together on rural festivals or holidays, for in the Highlands now these are not so frequent as of yore; yet all these sweet seldoms, taken together, to loving hearts made a happy many, and thus, though each family passed its life in its own homefelt wilderness, there were many invisible threads stretched out through the intermediate air, connecting the two dwellings together-even as the dew-gemmed gossa mer keeps floating from one tree to another, each with its own secret nest. And nestlike both dwellings were. That in Glenco, built beneath a treeless but high-heathered rock-lown in all storms-with greensward and garden on a slope down to that rivulet, the clearest of the clear, (oh! once wofully redden'd!) and growing-so it seems in the mosses of its own roof, and the huge stones that overshadow it—out of, and belonging to, the solid earth. That in Glencreran, more conspicuous, on a knoll among the pastoral meadows, midway between mountain and mountain, so that the grove which shelters it, except when the sun is shining in his meridian-tower, is darkened by both their shadows, and dark, indeed, even in the sunshine, for 'tis a low but wide-armed grove of old oaklike pines. A little farther down, and Glencreran is truly "a silvan scene" indeed; but this dwelling is the highest up of all, the first you descend upon, near the foot of that wild hanging staircase now between you and Glen-Etive, and, except this old oaklike grove of pines, there is not a tree, and hardly a bush, on bank or brae, pasture or hayfield, though these are kept, by many a rill, there mingling themselves into one stream, in a perpetual green lustre that seemeth "unborrowed from the sun," and to be as native to the grass as its light is to the glow-worm. Such are the two huts-for they are huts and no more-and you may see them still, if you know how to discover the beautiful sights of nature from descriptions treasured in your heart and if the spirit of change, now nowhere at rest on the earth, not even in its most solitary places, have not swept violently from the scenes they beautified, the humble but hereditary dwellings that ought to be allowed, in the fulness of the quiet time, to relapse back into the bosom of nature, through insensible and unperceived decay. These huts belonged to brothers-and each had an only child a son and a daughter-born on the same day -and now blooming on the verge of youth. A year ago, and they were but mere children-but what wondrous growth of spirit and of the spirit's frame does nature, at that season of life, often present before our eyes, so that we almost see the very change going on between morn and morn, and feel that these objects of our affection are daily brought closer to ourselves, by their partaking daily more and more in all our most sacred thoughts, in our cares and in our duties, and in knowledge of the sorrows as well as the joys of our common lot. Thus had these cousins grown up before their parents' eyes, Flora Macdonald-a name hallowed of yore—the fairest, and Hamish, the brightest of all the living flowers in Glencreran and Glenco. It was now their sixteenth birth-day-and never had a winter sun smiled more serenely over a hush of snow. Flora, it had been agreed on, was to pass that day in Glencreran, and Hamish to meet her among the mountains, that he might bring her down the many precipitous passes to his parents' hut. It was the middle of February, and the snow had lain for weeks with all its drifts unchanged, so calm had been the weather, and so continued the frost. At the same hour, known by horologe on the cliff touched by the finger of dawn, the happy creatures left each their own glen, and mile after mile of the smooth surface glided away past their feet, almost as the quiet water glides by the little boat that, in favouring breezes, walks merrily along the sea. And soon they met at the trysting-place-a bank of birch-trees, beneath a cliff that takes its name from the eagles. On their meeting, seemed not the whole wilderness to their souls and senses suddenly inspired with beauty and with joy? Insects unheard by them before hummed and glittered in the air-from tree-roots, where the snow was thin, little flowers, or herbs flowerlike, now for the first time were seen looking out as if alive-the trees themselves seemed budding as if it were already spring-and rare as, in that rocky region, are the birds of song, a faint trill for a moment touched their ear, and the flutter of a wing, telling them that somewhere near there was preparation for a nest. Deep down beneath the snow they listened to the tinkle of rills unreached by the frost-and merry, thought they, was the music of these contented prisoners. Not summer's self, in its deepest green, so beautiful had ever been to them before, as now the mild white of winter; and when their eyes were lifted up to heaven, when had they ever seen before a sky of such perfect blue-a sun so gentle in its brightness, or altogether a week-day in any season, so like a Sabbath in its stillness, so like a holiday in its joy! Lovers were they—although as yet they knew it not for from love only could have come such bliss as now was theirs-a bliss, that while it beautified, they felt came from and belonged to the eternal skies. In that wilderness Flora sang all her old songs to those wild Gaelic airs that sound like the sighing of winds among fractured cliffs, or the branches of storm-tossed trees, when the subsiding tempest is about to let them rest. Monotonous music! but irresistible over the heart it has once awakened and enthralled, so sincere seems to be the mournfulness it breathes in its simplicity—a mournfulness brooding and feeding for ever and ever on the same note, that is at once its natural expression and its sweetest aliment, of which the dreaming singer never wearieth in her wo, while her heart all the time is haunted by all that is most piteous in memory, by the faces of the dead in their paleness returning to the shades of mortality, only that once more they may pour from their fixed eyes those strange showers of unaccountable tears! How merry were they between those mournful airs! Oh how Flora trembled to see her lover's burning brow and flashing eyes, as he told her tales of great battles fought in foreign lands far, far across the sea-tales which he had drunk in with greedy ears from the old heroes scattered all over Lochaber and Badenoch, on the brink of the grave still garrulous of blood! "The sun sat high in his meridian tower," but time had not been with the youthful lovers, and the blessed beings believed that yet 'twas but a little hour since beneath the Eagle Cliff they had met in the prime of the full-brightened morn! The boy starts to his feet-and his keen eye looks along the ready rifle-for his sires had all been famous deerstalkers, and the passion of the chase was hereditary in his blood. Lo! a deer from Dalness, dog-driven, or sullenly astray, slowly bearing his antlers up the glen, then stopping for a moment to snuff the air, and like lightning away-away! The rifle-shot rings dully from the scarce echoing snow-cliffs, and the animal leaps aloft, struck by a mortal but not a sudden-death wound. Oh! for Fingal now to pull him down like a wolf-but labouring and lumbering heavily along, the snow spotted, as he bounds, with blood, the huge animal at last disappears round some rocks at the head of the glen. "Follow me, Flora!" the boy-hunter cries and flinging down their plaids they turn their bright faces to the mountain, and away up the long glen after the stricken deer. Fleet was the mountain-girl as an Oread-and Hamish, as he ever and anon looked back to wave her on, with pride admired the beauty of her lightsome motion as she bounded along the snow. Redder and redder grew that snow, and more heavily trampled, as they winded round the rocks-and, lo! the deer staggering up the mountain, not half a mile off, and there standing at bay, as if before his swimming eyes came a vision of Fingal, the terror of the forest, whose howl was known to all the echoes, and quailed the herd while their antlers were yet afar off! "Rest, Flora! rest! while I fly to him with my rifle-and shoot him through the heart!" Up-up-up-far far far up the interminable glen, that kept winding and winding, round many a jutting promontory, and many a castled cliff, the red-deer kept dragging its gore-oozing bulk, sometimes almost within, and then, for some hundreds of yards, beyond rifle-shot, while the boy, maddened by the chase, pressed forwards, now all alone, nor any more looking behind for Flora, who had entirely disappeared; and thus he was hurried on for miles by the whirlwind of passion-till at last he struck the noble quarry, and down sank the antlers in the snow, while the air was spurned by the convulsive beatings of feet. Then leaped Hamish upon the red-deer like a beast of prey and lifted up a look of triumph to the mountain tops. Where is Flora? Her lover has forgotten her-and he is alone-nor knows it-in the wilderness-he and the red-deer-an enormous animal-fast stiffening in the frost of death. |