CHAPTER I.

FAR OVER THE HILLS.

“Oh, would I were a boy again, When life seemed formed of sunny years, And all the heart then knew of pain Was wept away in transient tears.” SAM. F. SMITH.

It was autumn--autumn, that is, as we reckon the seasons in the Scottish Highlands. For August was wellnigh at a close. The heather, it is true, still bloomed crimson and red on the mountain sides and the beautiful braes, but the days were now appreciably shorter, and hot though they might be during the day, soon after the sun went down,

“And left the red clouds to preside o’er the scene,”

the winds felt chilly, and sometimes a little raw.

This particular evening was no exception, and darkness came on a full hour sooner, with no moon and never a star to light me from the hill where I had lingered, with my beautiful Gordon setter Dash, longer than usual. I did not care to return without a fairly good bag, and the birds on the bit of shooting I called mine were getting a little wild.

I was living with the minister of Glen T---- in Ross-shire. He was an old man, and did not care to go to the hill much himself. “The scenery all around,” he used to say smiling, “is good enough for me, and I mean to live and die here without ever leaving the glen again.”

Well might he have said the scenery was good enough for him. I have never seen wilder or more beautiful in any part of the world. Had you climbed a high hill, you would have said it was a chaos of mountains; but all between these were braes clad in silver drooping birch, with here and there a patch of dark and solemn pine wood, the abode of hawks and crows, with many a bird of prey besides. Higher up was the crimson heather, while patches of snow were to be seen in clefts and hollows highest of all, and this snow never left.

But it was the multitude of small lochs or lakes that would have struck you as most marvellous of all. Not a glen that had not two or three of these, with perhaps silver streams between, and torrents or cataracts roaring down the mountain sides--the marvel being where the water came from. At times, indeed, it appeared to roll out of the very sky itself.

Well, it was late before I fired my final cartridge, and by a fluke, for I had not aimed, bagged my last bird.

Then Dash and I started on our long journey to the manse. Ten miles if a foot; but I knew the road well, and had known it from boyhood. I had been since then all over the world, and had more wild adventures than I may ever be able to describe in print; still I remembered the road, or--I believed I did. English fields and meadows may change in a few years into towns and streets, but the everlasting hills are the same for ages.

“Well, Dash, my boy,” I said, “I’m very hungry, whatever you may be.”

Dash wagged his flag of a tail to intimate that he too could do with a pick of something.

I petted and smoothed him.

“Dash,” I said, “there is a short cut across the hills and along the edge of cliff Eurna--a thousand feet perpendicular it is, Dash. It was here where a shepherd fell over after a sheep. But I’ve often skirted it in the dark, so don’t be afraid. Let us try. This will save us four miles, doggie.”

On we went now merrily enough, I singing to make the road seem shorter.

But it was getting darker and darker every minute. By the time we--that is, Dash and I, for I ever look upon a dog as a companion second only to a human being, and often far before one--reached Ault na Geoul, a wild, dark mountain stream that came roaring through a gorge not five hundred yards above, forming many a white and chafing rapid, and many a deep, dark pool, in which they said the kelpies[A] dwelt, night had so far fallen that scarcely could I see to gather a pocketful of round stones, the need for which will be seen presently.

It was just here where the short cut commenced, and once safely over the hill skirting one of the most dangerous cliffs in the Highlands, we should only have two miles further to walk.

We forded the stream, which was low at present, and soon after I found the little winding path, and we commenced the ascent.

The brae, and indeed all the hill, was covered with drooping birch. There was not a star to be seen to-night, and clouds which must have been half a mile through hung low over the mountains. Not that we could see them. Oh no; so dangerously dark was it that if I stretched my gun straight out in front of me I could not see the muzzle.

You will now find out what was to be the use of the stones I had collected. You must know, then, that the little path through the birch wood led almost directly up a hill or brae fully one thousand feet high, and directly on to and at right angles to the edge of the fearful precipice I have already mentioned. It then turned off to the right. The capital letter =T= will represent a plan of the situation. The shaft of the letter is the pathway leading upwards from the glen and the stream below, the upper or cross-bar is the edge of the perpendicular cliff, and close to this we must get before turning off to the right, and descending as near to the precipice edge as possible.

So long as the path led upwards I was safe enough, but by-and-by we were on level ground, and now the real danger commenced. We might walk straight over that black and fearful cliff.

In my boyhood’s days, myself and my companions, on many a dark, “mirk” night, had done as I was about to do now, and we never had an accident.

I could not have been more than from forty to sixty yards from the cliff edge, when I ordered Dash to keep close behind me. Then bending low to the ground, I threw a stone a few yards ahead of me, listening intently. I heard it fall on solid ground.

We cautiously advanced some distance, and I threw out another. That too I heard fall, and so did the third and fourth.

_But the fifth made no sound._

We were close to the cliff, and it had gone over. I tried the experiment again and again to make sure; then turning directly off to the right, was overjoyed at finding the foot-way. In no part of the way down could we have been farther from this black, wet precipice than four or five yards. But the stones I threw kept us safe, and we were soon down and in a bonnie, bosky dell at the foot.

* * * * *

It has been my lot and luck in life, all through so far, to get every now and then mixed up with strange adventures. People who do me the honour to read my books often give me credit for an inventive faculty when no such credit is deserved. My drawers are filled with piles of old log-books detailing scenes and incidents that I have been mixed up in, so that I really have not to depend on imagination for my facts, as many other writers have. This is the advantage of having been a sailor, and of being still a wanderer and a rover. But little did I think to-night that my having taken that short cut would give me subject-matter for so strange--because true--a story as that which I am now writing.

Let me call the wooded dingle in which I now stood with dog and gun Glen Foogle, because that is not its name. It was a bonnie wee glen when I knew it before, and that was long, long ago. There were some green, cultivated fields here that were then let as a farm to old Donal’ Graat, who kept a few cows and a sheepie or two, and was content to live and die in that long, low, thatched hut, as his fathers had done before him.

The fields bordered a beautiful little loch of water, so brown that even the fish caught here were as red in flesh as a salmon, and many a dozen I had lifted out of it.

Clumps of dark pine trees and weeping birches were everywhere.

I had no idea that any great change had been made in this wee glen. I had heard that old Donal’ was dead, and that his son had grown up from a tow-haired, bare-headed, kilted laddie, to a tall and stalwart young man, and had enlisted into the “gallant Forty-twa;” but that was all.

In Tam o’ Shanter’s memorable ride

“As he frae Ayr ae nicht did canter,”

he was brought up with a round turn, as sailors would say, on nearing an old ruined church.

He was by this time

“Past the birks[B] and meikle[C] stane Whare drunken Charlie brak’s neck-bane: And thro’ the whins, and by the cairn Whare hunters fand the murder’d bairn; And near the thorn, aboon the well, Whare Mungo’s mither hang’d hersel. Before him Doon pours all his floods; The doubling storm roars thro’ the woods; The lightnings flash from pole to pole, Near and more near the thunders roll;-- When, glimmering thro’ the groaning trees, Kirk-Alloway seem’d in a bleeze; Thro’ ilka bore [hole] the beams were glancing, And loud resounded mirth and dancing.”

Well, Tam o’ Shanter was in a state of very great astonishment indeed, and so was I as soon as I turned a corner and opened out the terrace or green platform on which Donal’ Graat’s old-fashioned Highland hut was wont to stand.

For a few moments I thought I must be dreaming. The little table-land above the loch had been transformed into terraced gardens, and these, at this moment, were all brilliantly lit up with coloured lights and pretty Chinese lanterns, that hung from the shrubs and trees, and waved gently too and fro on the soft summer’s air.

Above all was the broad and well-lit balcony of a villa, and from this resounded not mirth and dancing, but mirth and music.

I did just as Tam o’ Shanter did--and had it been a crime to have done so, I believe I should have done it just the same--

“I ventur’d forward on the licht.”

Yes, I opened the gateway near a little pier that jutted out into the loch, and went up one flight of broad steps after another till I stood close beneath the veranda, dog at heel and gun under my arm. Not until I felt the glare of the lamp-light on my face, and knew that every eye was bent upon me, did I recognize the fact that my presence here was really an unwarrantable intrusion.

Those on the veranda may be briefly described as follows, for they were not numerous:--There were first two or three ladies of uncertain age, one seated on a footstool, the rest on light chairs; there was a brown-faced, good-looking man of probably fifty years of age, evidently a sailor every inch, leaning back in an easy arm-chair, and with a very large meerschaum in his hand and mouth. Not far off stood a most beautiful young girl, of probably fourteen or fifteen, holding a violin which she had been playing; and near her feet, reclining on a Highland plaid, was a young fellow, certainly not twenty, fondling a guitar.

I felt, of course, that an apology was needed, and proceeded to make one, lame though it doubtless appeared.

“My friends,” I said, “when I tell you that I really have no excuse for intruding on your privacy, you will wonder why I am here. I shall retire at once when I inform you that long ago, before I went to sea, I used to reside with the minister of the strath beyond here. I have come back to pay him a visit. I was shooting to-day, and being overtaken by night, took the short cut home by the precipice side.”

“What!” exclaimed the gentleman, “you skirted that fearful precipice in the pitchy darkness that others are afraid to go near by day?”

“I’m an old mountaineer,” I said, and then described how I had managed safely and well.

“There used to be no house here,” I continued, “only an old hut; and when I came suddenly on a scene of light and loveliness, I just came up through the garden to see whether or not I was dreaming. And now good-night, friends.”

“Nay, nay,” cried the gentleman. “Even if you had not told me, I could have seen you were a sailor. We are just going to dine; you must join us.”

“I am dusty and not dressed.”

“The Highland dress is always dress.”

“But the minister! he will think I have met with an accident.”

“Mungo, our ghillie, shall run over to the manse and explain all.”

I laughed now pleasantly enough and consented to stay, for indeed I was both faint and hungry.

That was as nice a little dinner as ever I remember partaking of. The mountain trout from the loch beneath were far better than salmon. There was mountain mutton, too, that had been fed in the glen. The vegetables were delicious, and so too was the fruit.

I felt certain before an hour was over that I was in a fair way to become very friendly, not only with Captain Reeves himself, but with pretty little Mina Reeves and young Don Miguel M‘Lean.

A strange name, I must admit, but the lad himself was somewhat strange. His father--dead--was half a Spaniard; his mother--at this time living in the “Granite City”--was sister to Captain Reeves.

I will tell you, reader, more about Mina and Don Miguel in my next chapter.

Here let me say that I spent a most enjoyable evening. I am a very poor smoker, but my host’s cigars were so exceedingly mild that I could not help indulging in one at least.

This would not hurt a fully-developed man. It is to boys or young men that the too seductive weed proves so very harmful, weakening the nerves and rendering the heart as soft and flabby as that of a rabbit.

Many a story of his wild life at sea did the captain tell me, and naturally enough I was not far behind in spinning a yarn (true). Not only did Miguel himself and Mina sit near us, seemingly entranced, but the old maids of uncertain age as well.

Just once or twice did we break up to listen to the Don’s guitar and the sweet, sad strains of Mina’s violin; then the instruments were laid aside for the night, and we were ordered to commence again.

“Why,” I cried at last, “it is long past ten!”

“Yes,” said Reeves, smiling; “but just keep your seat, for I sent word that you would not be home to-night.”

And really, reader, as I reseated myself I felt that I was not a bit sorry.