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None hindered my movements, so, liking little the smell of wet, uncleanly garments which clung around the fire, I made my bed in a heather bush in the lee of a boulder, and from utter weariness fell presently asleep. The storm died away in the night, and I awoke to a clear, rain-washed world and the chill of an autumn morn.
He wrote in a faint scrawl, "Help me to that burnside. Then I can guide you." I hardly know how I got him there, for, light as he was, I am no Hercules. However, with many a rest, we reached the little dell; and then I carried him up its green side, and laid him on the heather of the moor. He wrote again: "Go to that clump of rushes the third from the little hillock. Then look, but be careful.
'Then you might do better, said Miss Delacour, speaking in a very stern voice. 'I haven't quite caught your name, child, but you have evidently not learned respect for your elders. 'My name is Hollyhock. I 'm a Scots lass frae the heather. Eh, but there's no air like the air o' the heather! Did you ever get a bit of it, all white? Yes, there's luck for you.
I was glad enough to sink on a clump of white clover. He stretched himself on the heather, a little way from me. Silence followed. He was giving me time to recover myself. As soon, therefore, as I was able, it was my part to speak. "Where is your horse?" I asked. The first word is generally one hardly worth saying. "I left him at a little farmhouse, about a mile from here.
Only the fact remains that, like the heather ale of old, Donald's whisky was held in high esteem, its effects on the visitors who began in numbers to seek the seclusion of his bothy, as "blessed" as were ever those of that earlier mysterious beverage beloved of our Pictish ancestors: "From the bonny bells of heather They brewed a drink long-syne, Was sweeter far than honey, Was stronger far than wine.
I've always wanted something romantic to happen to me in the heather moon; yet nothing ever has, so far. It couldn't, at Grandma's!" "But you haven't explained the heather moon," Basil reminded her. "Don't you really know?" She opened her eyes very wide as she smiled at him in a friendly, childlike way; and Basil and Somerled forgot that there was a Mrs. West in the room.
When we steamed up to Canton, and saw the rich alluvial banks covered with the luxuriant evidences of unrivalled industry and natural fertility combined; beyond them, barren uplands, sprinkled with a soil of a reddish tint, which gave them the appearance of heather slopes in the Highlands; and beyond these again, the white cloud mountain range, standing out bold and blue in the clear sunshine, I thought bitterly of those who, for the most selfish objects, are trampling under foot this ancient civilisation.
It only meant seizing hold of a clump of wiry heather twice over and drawing himself to where his face was close to the sleeper. Then he resigned himself again with a sigh to try and bear his position. "He's best off," he muttered, "bad as he is, for he can't feel what I do." How the rest of that day of scorching sunshine and cruel thirst passed onward Pen Gray could not afterwards recall.
There was a copper beech, where the birds sang, and from which they raided the fruit with the skill of Highland caterans. The Lodge bees lived all day in this garden, save when they went to reinforce their sweetness from the heather bloom. The big trees stood round the place and covered it from every wind except the south, and the sun was ever blessing it.
Great boulders were scattered among the thorn bushes, and over their rough and glistening breasts were flung velvet coverings of green moss and grey lichen. On this October day, the heather yet sturdily bore a few last rosy blossoms, and the ripe blackberries shone like black diamonds on the straggling brambles. Here and there a belated furze-bush erected its golden crown.
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