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It is a grand and impressive sight one of those dark- browed hills of the Border-land, bearded to its rock-ridged forehead with such bush-bristles and haired with matted heather. In nature it is what a painted Indian squaw in her blanket, eagle feathers and moccasins, is in the world of humanity.
But the heather that I have trode upon when living, must bloom ower me when I am dead my heart would sink, and my arm would shrink and wither like fern in the frost, were I to lose sight of my native hills; nor has the world a scene that would console me for the loss of the rocks and cairns, wild as they are, that you see around us.
Ink above us, so close above us, too, that it seems as if one might touch it with lifted hand; ink around us; a great stretch of dull and sulky heather; and, maddening around us with devilish glee, hitting us, buffeting us, bruising us, taking away our breath, and making our eyelids smart, is a wind such a wind! I should have laughed if any one had told me an hour ago that it would rise.
About half-way home, on the side of a hill, across which a low wind, the long death-moan of autumn, blew with a hopeless, undulant, but not intermittent wail among the heather, Kirsty broke into a passionate fit of weeping, but ere she reached home all traces of her tears had vanished. Gordon did not go the next day, nor the day after, but he never saw Phemy again.
With her soft cheek against his he felt incredibly weak. "You don't know how much I love you," he said. "I'd give anything in the world to be able to tell you what I've got in my heart." He sought her lips. The summer came. The highland valley was green and fragrant, and the hills were gay with the heather.
The next, I was pricking Modestine forward, and guiding her like an unruly ship through the open. In a path, she went doggedly ahead of her own accord, as before a fair wind; but once on the turf or among heather, and the brute became demented.
And then a long, bare ridge of tumbled boulders, with bright sand-breaks between them, and wavering sandy roads among the bracken and brown heather. It is all rather cold and unhomely.
Norton, who had just come out of the wood with his bundle. "Now, Olly, let me just put you on the top of it to finish it off. How you would fizz!" Off ran Olly, with his father after him, and they had a romp among the heather till Mr. Norton caught him, and carried him kicking and laughing under his arm to Aunt Emma. "Now, Aunt Emma, shall I put him on?"
"Good-bye, then, and thank you!" he said in a louder tone, and before she could collect herself, she saw him, with the bearskin over his shoulder, the gun in his hand, and the dog at his side, striding away over the heather. There was a dip in the hills just there, and she saw him clear against the sky; his light, firm step taking him quickly away.
It sounded as if he liked her and was not the least afraid she would not like him, though he was only a common moor boy, in patched clothes and with a funny face and a rough, rusty-red head. As she came closer to him she noticed that there was a clean fresh scent of heather and grass and leaves about him, almost as if he were made of them.
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