The Cruise of the Land-Yacht "Wanderer" Part 29

There is a strong breeze blowing, but it is an invigorating one, and now, at eight o'clock on this morning, the sun is shining brightly enough, whatever it may do later on.

What a grand day for the moors! It will quite make up for the loss of yesterday, when doubtless there were more drams than dead grouse about.

In Glasgow, days ago, I noticed that the poulterers' windows were decorated with blooming heather in antic.i.p.ation of the twelfth.

I saw yesterday afternoon some "lads in kilts"--Saxons, by the shape of their legs. But I do not hold with Professor Blackie, that if you see a gentleman in Highland garb "he must either be an Englishman or a fool."

For I know that our merriest of professors, best of Greek scholars, and most enthusiastic of Scotchmen, would himself wear the kilt if there was the slightest possibility of keeping his stockings up!

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

ON THE HIGH ROAD TO THE HIGHLANDS.

"... Here the bleak mount, The bare bleak mountain speckled thin with sheep; Grey clouds, that shadowing spot the sunny fields; And river, now with bushy rocks o'erbrowed, Now winding bright and full, with naked banks; And seats and lawns, the abbey and the wood; And cots and hamlets, and faint city spire."

Coleridge.

At c.u.mbernauld, the people were pleased to see us once more, and quite a large crowd surrounded the Wanderer. On leaving the village we were boarded by a young clergyman and his wife, such pleasant enthusiastic sort of people that it does one good to look at and converse with.

Pa.s.sed strings of caravans at Dennyloanhead, and exchanged smiles and good-morrows with them. Then on to the Stirling road, through an altogether charming country.

Through Windsor Newton, and the romantic village of Saint Ninian's, near which is Bannockburn.

Then away and away to Stirling, and through it, intending to bivouac for the night at Bridge of Allan, but, Scot that I am, I could not pa.s.s that monument on Abbey Craig, to Scotland's great deliverer; so here I lie on the grounds of a railway company, under the very shadow of this lovely wooded craig, and on the site of a memorable battle.

How beautiful the evening is! The sun, as the song says, "has gone down o'er the lofty Ben Lomond," but it has left no "red clouds to preside o'er the scene."

A purple haze is over all yonder range of lofty mountains, great banks of cloud are rising behind them. Up in the blue, a pale scimitar of a moon is shining, and peace, peace, peace, is over all the wild scene.

By-the-bye, at Saint Ninian's to-day, we stabled at the "Scots wha hae,"

and my horses had to walk through the house, in at the hall door and out at the back. [Travellers will do well to ask prices here before accepting accommodation.] But nothing now would surprise or startle those animals. I often wonder what they think of it all.

We were early on the road this morning of August 14th, feeling, and probably looking, as fresh as daisies. Too early to meet anything or anyone except farmers' carts, with horses only half awake, and men nodding among the straw.

Bridge of Allan is a sweet wee town, by the banks of the river, embosomed in trees, quite a model modern watering-place.

We travel on through splendid avenues of trees, that meet overhead, making the road a leafy tunnel, but the morning sun is shimmering through the green canopy, and his beams falling upon our path make it a study in black and white.

The road is a rolling one, reminding us forcibly of Northumbrian banks and Durham braes.

The trains here seem strangely erratic, we meet them at every corner.

They come popping out from and go popping into the most unlikely places, out from a wood, out of the face of a rock, or up out of the earth in a bare green meadow, disappearing almost instantly with an eldritch shriek into some other hole or glen or wood.

Through the city of Dunblane, with its Ruined cathedral, by narrow roads across country fifteen miles, till we reach Blackford, and as there are to be games here to-morrow, we get run into a fine open meadow behind Edmund's Hotel, and bivouac for the night.

Both my coachman and my valet were Englishmen, and it would be something new for them, at all events.

The meadow into which I drove was very quiet and retired. The games were to be held in an adjoining rolling field, and from the roof of the Wanderer a very good view could be had of all the goings-on.

On looking at my notes, written on the evening before the Highland gathering, I find that it was my doggie friend Hurricane Bob who first suggested my stopping for the games.

"Did ever you see such a glorious meadow in your life?" he seemed to say, as he threw himself on his broad back and began tumbling on the sward. "Did you ever see greener gra.s.s," he continued, "or more lovely white clover? You _must_ stay here, master."

"Well, I think I will stay, Bob," I replied.

"What say you, Pea-blossom?" I continued, addressing my saucy bay mare.

"Stay?" replied Pea-blossom, tossing her head. "Certainly stay. You stopped a whole week at Chryston, and I thought I was going to be a lady for life."

"And what say you, Corn-flower?" I continued, addressing my horse, who, by the way, is not quite so refined in his ideas as Pea-blossom.

"Which I'd stop anyw'eres," said Corn-flower, taking an immense mouthful of clover, "where there be such feeding as this."

Well, when both one's horses, besides his Newfoundland dog and his servants, want to stay at a place for the night, compliance in the master becomes a kind of a virtue.

The Evening before the Games.

"Now rose Sweet evening, solemn hour; the sun, declined, Hung golden o'er this nether firmament, Whose broad cerulean mirror, calmly bright, Gave back his beamy image to the sky With splendour undiminished."

Mallet.

The village is all a-quiver to-night with the excitement of expectancy, and many an anxious eye is turned skywards.

"If the breeze holds from this direction," says the landlord of the hotel, "it will be fine for certain."

Poor fellow! little could he dream while he spoke of the dreadful accident that would befall him but a few hours after he thus talked so hopefully.

At sunset to-night a balloon-like cloud settles down on the peak of distant Ben Voirloch, and as this soon becomes tinged with red, the lofty hill has all the appearance of a burning mountain. But all the northwestern sky is now such a sight to see that only the genius of a Burns could describe it in words, while no brush of painter could do justice to it, now that the immortal Turner is no longer on earth.

There are leaden-grey clouds banked along near the horizon; behind these and afar off are cloud-streaks of gold, which--now that the sun is down--change slowly to crimson, then to grey and to bronze.

An hour after sunset these cloud-streaks are of a strange pale yellow colour, only one shade deeper than the sky-tint itself. Even while I am still gazing on it this last turns to a pale sea-green of indescribable beauty, and high up yonder rides a half-moon.

Deeper and deeper grows the yellow of the cloud-streaks till they a.s.sume a fiery orange colour; above this is the green of the empty sky, while higher still, betwixt this and the blue vault of heaven, in which the moon is sailing, is a misty blush of crimson.

But now all the distant mountain-tops get enveloped in clouds of leaden-grey, the night-air becomes chill; I close my notes and retire to my caravan, and soon I hope to be sleeping as soundly as my honest dog yonder.

Travelling about, as I constantly do, in all sorts of queer places and among all kinds of scenes, both in towns and in the country, it may not seem surprising that I am often the right man in the right place when an accident occurs. I am certain I have saved many lives by being on the spot when a medical man was wanted _instantly_.

I _did_ retire to my caravan; but, instead of going to bed, all inviting though it looked, I began to read, and after an hour spent thus the beauty of the night lured me out again. "Happy thought!" I said to myself; "it must be nearly eleven o'clock; I shall go and see what sort of people are emptied out of the inns."

But at the very moment I stood near the door of the hotel already mentioned, the innkeeper had been hurled from the topmost banisters of the stairs by a drunken farmer who had fallen from above on him.

The shrieks of women folks brought me to the spot.

"Oh! he is killed, he is killed!" they were screaming.

And there he lay on his back on the cold stones with which his head had come into fearful contact. On his back he was, still as death, to all appearance dead. With half-open eyes and dilated pupils, and pulseless.