Old Mortality, Volume 2. by Walter Scott (most important books to read txt) 📗

were bound for Milnwoodhouse, and then tak the first broken disjasked-looking road that makes for the hills,—ye'll ken 't by a broken ash-tree that stands at the side o' a burn just where the roads meet; and then travel out the path,—ye canna miss Widow Maclure's public, for deil another house or hauld is on the road for ten lang Scots miles, and that's worth twenty English. I am sorry your honour would think o' gaun out o' my house the night. But my wife's gude-sister is a decent woman, and it's no lost that a friend gets."

Morton accordingly paid his reckoning and departed. The sunset of the summer day placed him at the ash-tree, where the path led up towards the moors.

"Here," he said to himself, "my misfortunes commenced; for just here, when Burley and I were about to separate on the first night we ever met, he was alarmed by the intelligence that the passes were secured by soldiers lying in wait for him. Beneath that very ash sate the old woman who apprised him of his danger. How strange that my whole fortunes should have become inseparably interwoven with that man's, without anything more on my part than the discharge of an ordinary duty of humanity! Would to Heaven it were possible I could find my humble quiet and tranquillity of mind upon the spot where I lost them!"

Thus arranging his reflections betwixt speech and thought, he turned his horse's head up the path.

Evening lowered around him as he advanced up the narrow dell which had once been a wood, but was now a ravine divested of trees, unless where a few, from their inaccessible situation on the edge of precipitous banks, or clinging among rocks and huge stones, defied the invasion of men and of cattle, like the scattered tribes of a conquered country, driven to take refuge in the barren strength of its mountains. These too, wasted and decayed, seemed rather to exist than to flourish, and only served to indicate what the landscape had once been. But the stream brawled down among them in all its freshness and vivacity, giving the life and animation which a mountain rivulet alone can confer on the barest and most savage scenes, and which the inhabitants of such a country miss when gazing even upon the tranquil winding of a majestic stream through plains of fertility, and beside palaces of splendour. The track of the road followed the course of the brook, which was now visible, and now only to be distinguished by its brawling heard among the stones or in the clefts of the rock that occasionally interrupted its course.

"Murmurer that thou art," said Morton, in the enthusiasm of his reverie, "why chafe with the rocks that stop thy course for a moment? There is a sea to receive thee in its bosom; and there is an eternity for man when his fretful and hasty course through the vale of time shall be ceased and over. What thy petty fuming is to the deep and vast billows of a shoreless ocean, are our cares, hopes, fears, joys, and sorrows to the objects which must occupy us through the awful and boundless succession of ages!"

Thus moralizing, our traveller passed on till the dell opened, and the banks, receding from the brook, left a little green vale, exhibiting a croft, or small field, on which some corn was growing, and a cottage, whose walls were not above five feet high, and whose thatched roof, green with moisture, age, houseleek, and grass, had in some places suffered damage from the encroachment of two cows, whose appetite this appearance of verdure had diverted from their more legitimate pasture. An ill-spelt and worse-written inscription intimated to the traveller that he might here find refreshment for man and horse,—no unacceptable intimation, rude as the hut appeared to be, considering the wild path he had trod in approaching it, and the high and waste mountains which rose in desolate dignity behind this humble asylum.

It must indeed have been, thought Morton, in some such spot as this that Burley was likely to find a congenial confident.

As he approached, he observed the good dame of the house herself, seated by the door; she had hitherto been concealed from him by a huge alder-bush.

"Good evening, Mother," said the traveller. "Your name is Mistress Maclure?"

"Elizabeth Maclure, sir, a poor widow," was the reply.

"Can you lodge a stranger for a night?"

"I can, sir, if he will be pleased with the widow's cake and the widow's cruse."

"I have been a soldier, good dame," answered Morton, "and nothing can come amiss to me in the way of entertainment."

"A sodger, sir?" said the old woman, with a sigh,—"God send ye a better trade!"

"It is believed to be an honourable profession, my good dame; I hope you do not think the worse of me for having belonged to it?"

"I judge no one, sir," replied the woman, "and your voice sounds like that of a civil gentleman; but I hae witnessed sae muckle ill wi' sodgering in this puir land that I am e'en content that I can see nae mair o't wi' these sightless organs."

As she spoke thus, Morton observed that she was blind.

"Shall I not be troublesome to you, my good dame?" said he, compassionately; "your infirmity seems ill calculated for your profession."

"Na, sir," answered the old woman, "I can gang about the house readily eneugh; and I hae a bit lassie to help me, and the dragoon lads will look after your horse when they come hame frae their patrol, for a sma' matter; they are civiller now than lang syne."

Upon these assurances, Morton alighted.

"Peggy, my bonny bird," continued the hostess, addressing a little girl of twelve years old, who had by this time appeared, "tak the gentleman's horse to the stable, and slack his girths, and tak aff the bridle, and shake down a lock o' hay before him, till the dragoons come back.—Come this way, sir," she continued; "ye'll find my house clean, though it's a puir ane."

Morton followed her into the cottage accordingly.