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Updated: June 25, 2025
Here are green water-meadows and good corn-lands, the abbey demesne; here also are the strips of tillage which the tenants hold; here the sluices which head up the river for the Abbey mills, make thunderous music all day long.
Cairnsmuir and Ben Gairn stood out south and north like blue, round-shouldered sentinels. Castle Thrieve rose grey in the midst of the water-meadows, massive and sombre in the early sunrise. Andro the Penman and his brother John, with the taciturnity natural to early risers, were silently hoisting the flag which denoted the presence of the noble young chatelaine of the great fortress.
Accordingly we found cover in a belt of fir-trees overlooking the valley, and for a while possessed our souls in patience. We were early, having come without mishap or challenge, and to expect a like speed of two thousand five hundred men riding in thick fog through water-meadows, with ditches to be crossed and gates to be found and passed was in the last degree unreasonable.
Not only is it a still night on dusty high roads and on hill-summits, whence a wide expanse of country may be seen in repose, quieter and quieter as it spreads away into a fringe of trees against the sky with the grey ghost of a bloom upon them; not only is it a still night in gardens and in woods, and on the river where the water-meadows are fresh and green, and the stream sparkles on among pleasant islands, murmuring weirs, and whispering rushes; not only does the stillness attend it as it flows where houses cluster thick, where many bridges are reflected in it, where wharves and shipping make it black and awful, where it winds from these disfigurements through marshes whose grim beacons stand like skeletons washed ashore, where it expands through the bolder region of rising grounds, rich in cornfield wind-mill and steeple, and where it mingles with the ever-heaving sea; not only is it a still night on the deep, and on the shore where the watcher stands to see the ship with her spread wings cross the path of light that appears to be presented to only him; but even on this stranger's wilderness of London there is some rest.
The road stretched through water-meadows traversed by little brooks, whose quivering surfaces were braided along their centres, and folded into creases at the sides; or, where the flow was more rapid, the stream was pied with spots of white froth, which rode on in undisturbed serenity.
Another such wayside meal and another old couple live touchingly in our memories. We were still in the broad, sun-swept valley of the Genesee, our road lying along the edge of the wide, reed-grown flats and water-meadows, bounded on the north by rolling hills.
Morning and evening white mists trail over the grass of the water-meadows. But Jean and Jeanne love the river neither for the greenery of its banks nor its clear waters that mirror the heavens. They love it for the fish in it. They stop presently at the most likely place, and Jeanne sits down under a pollard willow. Laying down his baskets, Jean unwinds his tackle.
"Do you live at Whitmansworth Union?" There was a faint tinge of resentment in the short "Yes." How did the gentleman know it, and, anyhow, why should he tell him? Jim felt irritated. The owner of the phaeton stood still a moment with one hand on the dusty little shoulder, and then looked round at the water-meadows, the distant copses, the more distant shimmering downs.
Late in the following summer, when the fireweed was beginning to crimson the open spaces on the hillside, fate came to the water-meadows in a form which the bell was powerless to avert. An Indian, paddling down the Quah-Davic to the sea, caught sight of the red cow drinking by the waterside. He knew there was no settlement within leagues.
Along the river's edge, out in the open moonlight, it was difficult to follow them without risk of observation. Now and then the elder-bushes and drooping willows afforded cover beneath their deep shadow, but in places where the river wound through the open water-meadows my presence might at any moment be detected. Therefore the utmost ingenuity and caution were necessary.
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