The sun goes down behind the hills.
Then comes still Evening on.
In the bonnie Scottish Highlands, reader, in sweet summer-time, or in
riper autumn, we cannot say with truth that night falls; no, rather
"Evening steals down."
Oh! how gently she is stealing down now on the peaceful scene around
Kenneth and Kooran. Far down the glen yonder, where the river broadens
out in the valley, there lie long clouds of grey mist, with the tall
spruce pines glimmering green and ghost-like through them. They are the
trailing garments of Evening. Gradually they change to crimson as the
sun's parting rays fall on them.
But day lingers long on the hill-tops, among the steel-grey rocks, among
boulders that stand boldly out from the dark background like blocks of
snow, and among patches of purple heather. Evening sees that day must
go at last, so she hies away to put the flowers to sleep.
"Sleep, sleep, my gentle flowers," she says, "for the day is dying fast,
and the dews will fall and blight you."
She whispers to the gowans [mountain daisies] first, and the "wee modest
crimson-tipped flowers" fold their petals like sea-anemones, and go
softly to sleep. She lightly touches the pimpernels, the crimson and
the pink-eyed, and they curl their flower-leaves and sink to rest. She
breathes upon the wild convolvulus that trails among the grass, and it
twists up its silken blossoms till they look like little wisps of
calico, pink and white. Even the hardy heather bells creep closer
together, and the star-like blossoms of the bramble that clothe the
banks shrink smaller as she brushes them with her wings.
Then Evening speaks to the west wind.
"Blow softly, gentle west wind," she says; "blow softly through the
feathery larches and the needled pines; make the leaves of the russet
oaks and the silvery drooping birches sing soft lullabies, that my
children the flowers may sleep."
And the west wind obeys her, and goes sighing through the trees, and all
the flowerets nod and sleep.
The linnet has long gone to bed, close hidden under the whin bush. The
tom-tit creeps closer against a patch of lichen that grows on the stem
of an old ash tree. The cushat in the thicket of spruce hears the west
wind's lullaby, and ceases to croodle. The blackbird and thrush hide
themselves in the hawthorn tree; only the robin still sings on the top
rail of the old bridge.
"I will sing all night," the robin says. "I will sing with the trees
and the west wind till the sun returns."
"Twhoo-hoo-hoo!" shrieks the owl, and Robin flies away.
Then Evening goes to the hedgehog, to the fox, to the foumart, the
whitterit, the bat, and the vole.
"Come out now, come out now," she cries to these, "for the moon is
coming, and danger has fled with the daylight far over the hills."
But the lithe green snake, and the deadly adder, and the toad have heard
the invitation too, and lie closer under cover or creep into their
holes, for enemies are abroad.
Then slowly and solemnly over the distant hills uprises the moon.
And so gloaming gives place to night.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Something black came feathering along at last, and next moment Shot,
with his jacket quite wet, and very much out of breath with running, was
kissing his friend the collie.
Very soon after Dugald and Kenneth were shaking hands.
"You thought I wasn't coming?" said Dugald.
"Indeed, you're right, but I had almost fallen asleep."
"I've had such a chase after a couple of poachers. Didn't you hear me
firing? No? But troth, I did have a rap at one of them. Didn't kill
him? Man, no, and more's the pity. Troth, Kennie, lad, there are too
many about. But come along, till we see the fairy's knoll. Man, it's a
whole week since I've seen you. How's the sheep?"
"Doing well. No more late lambs. No more feeble dying ones."
The keeper shouldered his gun; the two dogs speedily tore up the grass
where the field-mouse had been singing. They destroyed all her tunnels
and mossy lanes, but they hadn't time to unearth the mouse herself.
Away up over the hills went the friends. Up, and up, and up. When on
the brow of the mountain they were to cross they must have been fifteen
hundred feet above the sea level. Down beneath them the rolling country
was slumbering in the misty moonlight, only the river meandered through
it all and sparkled like a thread of silver.
It was a near cut they had taken; they had now only to descend a little
way, and, behold, they were at the cave.
And soon in it.
"I'll light the lamp," said Kenneth, and in a moment more the interior
was illuminated.
"Well, I do declare this is grand! Never in this world before had
shepherd such a shelter, surely!"
So he well might say. Kenneth had cleaned the cave out, bedded the
floor with a carpet of withered brackens, hung a huge oil lamp in it,
which gave light and warmth both, built rude seats round it, made a rude
table, and conveyed hither his books, his fishing-gear, and even his
flute.
"Isn't it delightful!" cried Kenneth, laughing till his eyes danced and
sparkled in the moonlight.
"Oh! it is grand!" said Dugald, sitting down all the better to view the
place.
"I can eat my dinner here, you know," said Kenneth, "and read my books,
and study at night."
"At night!" exclaimed honest Dugald. "Wad ye no' be feared, man?" he
added solemnly. "Are there no bogles about? Losh! there might be even
ghosts. Or, man! just fancy a wee fairy body coming in through the door
when you were a' by yoursel'!"
"Oh!" cried the boy, "that is too good ever to be true. I should
rejoice to see a fairy."
"Well, man, rather you than me. But tak' your flute and play a tune, to
banish eerie thoughts."
Kenneth put his instrument together and commenced.
Shot sat down on the brackens and commenced too.
Dugald turned Shot out of the cave, but Kooran had better manners and
was allowed to stay. It was the "Flowers o' the Forest" that Kenneth
played, and to this sweetly mournful air Dugald listened entranced.
"Silly Dugald!" some would say, for his very eyes were moist.
"Ah! Kennie, man," he said at last, "I hope you may never live to play
that dear auld lilt in a foreign land with the tears rinnin' o'er your
face."
"What mean ye, Dugald?" Kenneth said.
"Mean?" cried Dugald almost fiercely. "Why, this, lad: that news came
to-day to the clachan that our auld laird, that has ever been sae kind
to us, is bankrupt, and has sold his fine estate to an American--to a
foreigner, Kennie."
"Don't say so?"
"But I do say so, and I fear it's an owertrue tale, lad. The place that
knows us noo may soon know us no more. For they tell me he is going to
evict the tenants, pull the clachan down, and turn our bonnie glen into
a forest for deer, knock doon the dear auld kirk, Kennie, that you and I
were christened in, and have sung psalms in Sunday after Sunday, knock
doon our kirk, give our roofs to the flames,--ay, Kennie, and level the
graves o' those we hold dear!"
"I really cannot believe all this, Dugald. Oh! it would kill my
mother."
"Poor laddie!" said Dugald, laying his hand kindly on Kenneth's
shoulder. "Poor laddie! Grief has been your share in the world of
late. Two or three years ago, when your father lived, what a merry boy
you were! But your father, once a thrifty crofter, had been reduced to
a humble shepherd, and when that broke his heart, and the Lord took him,
his brave boy Kennie left school and tended the sheep, and his industry
supports a widowed mother. Ay, lad, Kennie, it will gang hard on you
and hard on your mother to leave Glen Alva."
Kenneth looked the picture of despair. His flute had fallen from his
hand, and lay unheeded among the brackens.
"To leave my mother," he muttered, speaking apparently to himself, "to
go into a foreign land, that were bad, but to know that the very glen
itself was altered, the old kirk roofless, the houses heaps of ruins, to
have nothing to look back to, nothing at home to love--oh! Duncan,
Duncan, that wouldn't be absence from home; it would be banishment,
Duncan, banishment and exile."
"Let us try no' to think about it, Kennie. Dinna look so woe-begone,
man, or you'll mak' me sorry that I've told you."
The boy turned quickly round.
"Oh! but say you've been but joking. Say it is not true, Duncan."
"Oh hey!" was Duncan's answer--a big sigh, that was all.
"But you know," said Duncan, after a pause, "nobody is sure yet of
anything."
The boy laughed now.
"Ha! ha! yes," he cried, tearing himself away from gloomy thoughts.
"We'll have hope. We won't think about it, will we? Ha! ha! no, we
won't think about it. And I'll never say a single word to my mother
about the matter. It _may_ pass, you know.
"And so," he continued, "you really like my cave. Well, little Archie,
your son, will often be here with me. And you must come too, and we'll
have such fun. I wonder if the ptarmigans will build next year in the
same place as they did last. Mind when the snow falls you'll take me
for a day's white hare hunting, won't you? It is such grand sport, and
you promised, you know. What tune did you say I was to play? Something
merry. Oh! yes, I know--"
Kenneth recovered his flute from among the brackens as he spoke, and
rattled off into as merry a reel as ever witches danced to in "Alloway's
auld haunted kirk."
"First-rate!" cried Duncan, clapping his hands, while even Kooran barked
for joy, and Shot's voice gave gladsome echo at the cave's mouth.
"First-rate! man; that's the kind o' music to banish the bogies. Losh!
Kennie, music like that would have made Methuselah himsel' grow young
again. That it would."
It was late that evening ere the two friends found themselves down the
glen again, but when they bade each other good-night and walked briskly
homewards there was not a thought in their hearts of evil to come; they
were each as happy as the lark that carols o'er spring corn.