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Then she dropped off to sleep, to be awakened by the sun streaming into the room. That same morning, away up in the Highlands at Glencardine, Sir Henry had groped his way across the library to his accustomed chair, and Hill had placed before him one of the shallow drawers of the cabinet of seal-impressions.
He is persuaded that a white people, of which he has heard rumours all his life, exists somewhere on the highlands in the vast, still unexplored interior, and his great ambition is to find them before he dies. This is the wild quest upon which he and his companions have departed, and from which I shrewdly suspect they never will return.
The furthest line was big Unaka, but this passionate lover of her native highlands gave it neither thought nor glance, as she tramped steadily with lifted face, following unconsciously the beckoning finger of Fate. It was a dripping-sweet spring morning, dew-drenched, and with the air so full of moisture that it gathered and pattered from the scant leafage.
There is indeed strong reason to believe that the chiefs who came would have remained quietly at home if the government had understood the politics of the Highlands. Those politics were thoroughly understood by one able and experienced statesman, sprung from the great Highland family of Mackenzie, the Viscount Tarbet.
Arms, money, and provisions were collected; and the fiery cross was circulated throughout the country. Such proceedings could not be concealed, and the Lord Advocate, Craigie, wrote to Lord Lovat from Edinburgh, in the month of August, calling upon him to prove his allegiance, referring to Lovat's son as well able to assist him, and asking his counsels on the state of the Highlands.
In July, 1802, he was requested by the Lords of the Treasury, most probably in consequence of the preceding report, to make a further survey of the interior of the Highlands, the result of which he communicated in his report presented to Parliament in the following year.
The entire population of these highlands was only 6,662 souls in 1876, and there can be little doubt that, in the slow process of time, either they will be abandoned altogether, or by means of scientific methods utterly transformed. The laborious, long-suffering, hitherto ignored Caussenard will not surely be long neglected by the patriarchal Government of France.
"And if you should ever come to our part of the world, Miss White," said the major not letting his glance meet hers "you will be able to understand something of the old loyalty and affection and devotion the people in the Highlands showed to their chiefs; for I don't believe there is a man, woman, or child about the place who would not rather have a hand cut off than that Macleod should have a thorn scratch him.
All Paradise was there to see and hear and bear witness, as a matter of course; and there were not wanting farm-wagon loads from the great valley and from the Pine Knob highlands. Major Dabney was among the onlookers, sitting his clean-limbed Hambletonian, and twisting his huge white mustaches until they stood out like strange and fierce-looking horns.
The hills on either side slope down almost to the water's edge; the road leading to the bridge winding through a ravine, and then on the other side ascending through another ravine to the highlands. No sooner had the head of the column descended into this amphitheater of hills, than the rebels opened a destructive fire from behind defenses which they had thrown up along the hillsides.
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