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The young laird lived with his father and mother in a castle built high amid the heather-covered hills, and little until now had Donald cared for city ways or city walls. To hunt the deer, to chase the roe, to spend the long hours from early morn until even among the heathery moors which were all his own, had been happiness enough for him.

We sat and smoked on stiles, broaching paradoxes in the decent English air; we took short cuts across a park or two where the bracken was deep and my companion nodded to the old woman at the gate; we skirted rank coverts which rustled here and there as we passed, and we stretched ourselves at last on a heathery hillside where if the sun wasn't too hot neither was the earth too cold, and where the country lay beneath us in a rich blue mist.

The sun came out as I left the shelter of a pine-wood, and I beheld suddenly a fine wild landscape to the south. High rocky hills, as blue as sapphire, closed the view, and between these lay ridge upon ridge, heathery, craggy, the sun glittering on veins of rock, the underwood clambering in the hollows, as rude as God made them at the first.

Each could see the other's form like a black marble statue, but no feature could be traced. The mountain peaks and ridges could indeed be seen against the dark sky, like somewhat deeper shadows; but the crags and corries, the scattered rocks and heathery knolls, the peat-bogs and the tarns of the wild scene which these circling peaks enclosed all were steeped in impenetrable gloom.

The Priory was delightfully situated in the midst of pretty country, and the girls were allowed many rambles in the woods or on the heathery common.

On a heathery slope at the foot of the first terrace the Corsicans set down poor Nat and spoke a word to their mistress, who presently halted and exchanged a few sentences with them in patois; whereupon they stepped back a few paces into the macchia, and, having quickly cut a couple of ilex-staves, fell to plaiting them with lentisk, to form a litter.

Still the difference exists, not so much in the character of the bird as in the features of the country. It is the wild aspect of the heathery moor without a bound, except the rugged outline of the mountains upon the sky, that gives such a charm to the grouse-shooting in Scotland, and renders the deer-stalking such a favourite sport among the happy few who can enjoy it.

He knew better than go past Raby Hall to it: he went back toward Hillsborough, full three miles, and then turned off the road and got on the heather. He skirted the base of a heathery mound, and at last saw the church on an elevation before him, made for it incautiously over some boggy ground, and sank in up to his waist.

Constance Morton was leaning on the rail that divided the gardens at Northmoor from the park, which was still rough and heathery. Of all the Morton family, perhaps she was the one who had the most profited by the three years that had passed since her uncle's accession to the title.

There are heathery commons, roads embowered with great spreading trees, or running along open hill-sides, and frequently lovely views of the Hambletons and more distant moors in the north. In scenery of this character stands Gilling Castle, the seat of the Fairfaxes for some three centuries. It possesses one of the most beautiful Elizabethan dining-rooms to be found in this country.