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I came forth, I vow I know not how, on the Lang Dykes. This is a rural road which runs on the north side over-against the city. Thence I could see the whole black length of it tail down, from where the castle stands upon its crags above the loch, in a long line of spires and gable-ends and smoking chimneys, and at the sight my heart swelled in my bosom.
On the gable-ends are the Virgin and Child with two sisters of the hospital kneeling before them, and S. Ursula with the arrow, the instrument of her martyrdom, and virgins seeking protection under her mantle. On the longer sides of the reliquary itself, in six rather larger compartments, is painted the history of S. Ursula.
The tall sycamores or pendent willows shaded the houses, with caterpillars swinging, in long silken strings, from their branches, or moths, fluttering about like coxcombs, in joy at their gay transformation. The houses were built in the old Dutch style, with the gable-ends towards the street.
Then the gable-ends are built up of logs, shorter and shorter as the peak of the gable is approached, and kept in place by other small logs laid across, endwise of the cabin, and locked into the end of each log in the gable until all are in place. On these transverse logs, or rafters, the roof is laid.
What sculptured arches, leading into mysterious intricacies! what mullioned windows, that seem as if they must look into chapels flooded with devotional sunsets! what flying buttresses, and gable-ends, and niches with saints! But stop! 'tis a Moorish iniquity; for here, as I live, is a Saracenic arch; which, for aught I know, may lead into some interior Alhambra.
"This is a pretty, retired spot," quoth the Traveller, as at length he finished his repast, and threw himself back on his chair a very pretty spot. Whose neat old-fashioned house was that I passed on the green, with the gable-ends and the flower-plots in front? "Oh, the Squire's," answered Peter; "Squire Lester's an excellent gentleman."
Their shape is unimportant, except that they must not interfere at the knee. You must have muscles, not flabbiness; sinews like wire; nerves like sunbeams; and a thin layer of flesh to cushion the gable-ends, where you will strike, if you tumble, which, once for all be it said, you must never do. You must be all momentum, and no inertia.
The winding valley looked like Nature's color-box; the tall hills beyond, sleeping beneath their Persian shawls, contrasted richly with the cool pearl-gray of the lower sky behind them. Away to the right, though seemingly nearer than from the road below, rose the white steeple of the meeting-house, and, peeping out around it, the roofs and gable-ends of the village houses.
Here and there may be seen, as I have already hinted, small patches of bright green, and, sparsely scattered everywhere, are little red-roofed wooden cottages poor enough things the most of them; others, gaudy-looking affairs with gable-ends, white faces, and windows bordered with green. All of these are, while I write, reflected in the water as in a mirror, for there is not a breath of wind.
The lift and tension of the time sloughed off the immaterial weak act or thought. There were present a heroic simplicity, a naked verity, a full cup of service, a high and noble altruism. The plane was epic, and the people did well. The sky within Allan's range of vision was deep blue; the old brick gable-ends of houses, mellow and old, against it.
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