the tall trunks of the statelier firs
stood grey as ghosts. What was it, in that precious time, gave me, in
the very heart of my happiness, a foretaste of the melancholy of coming
years? My heart would swell, the tune upon my lip would cease, my eyes
would blur foolishly, looking on that prospect most magic and fine.
Rarely, in that happy age, did I venture to come down and meet the
girl, but--so contrary is the nature of man!--the day was happier when I
worshipped afar, though I went home fuming at my own lack of spirit.

To-day, my grief! how different the tale! That bygone time loomed upon
me like a wave borne down on a mariner on a frail raft, the passion of
the past ground me inwardly in a numb pain.

We stumbled through the snow, and my comrade--good heart!--said never a
word to mar my meditation. On our right the hill of Meall Ruadh rose up
like a storm-cloud ere the blackest of the night fell; we walked on the
edges of the plantations, surmising our way by the aid of the grey snow
around us.

It was not till we were in the very heart of Strongara wood that I came
to my reason and thought what folly was this to seek the wanderer in
such a place in dead of night. To walk that ancient wood, on the coarse
and broken ground, among fallen timber, bog, bush, water-pass, and
hillock, would have tried a sturdy forester by broad day; it was, to us
weary travellers, after a day of sturt, a madness to seek through it at
night for a woman and child whose particular concealment we had no means
of guessing.

M'lver, natheless, let me flounder through that perplexity for a time,
fearful, I suppose, to hurt my feelings by showing me how little I knew
of it, and finally he hinted at three cairns he was acquaint with, each
elevated somewhat over the general run of the country, and if not the
harbourage a refugee would make for, at least the most suitable coign to
overlook the Strongara wood.

"Lead me anywhere, for God's sake!" said I; "I'm as helpless as a mowdie
on the sea-beach."

He knew the wood as 'twere his own garden, for he had hunted it many
times with his cousiri, and so he led me briskly, by a kind of natural
path, to the first cairn. Neither there nor at the second did I get
answer to my whistle.

"We'll go up on the third," said John, "and bide there till morning;
scouring a wood in this fashion is like hunting otters in the deep sea."

We reached the third cairn when the hour was long past midnight I piped