Where Sorrow broods in silence evermore Among the shadows of eternal hills, While at her feet sobs the unceasing sea.
Tea is over--the large eggs, snowy scones, and home-made cheese that loaded the table half an hour ago, have been satisfactorily demolished; the full-bodied brown teapot has yielded its final drop, and the crofter’s warm-hearted wife is at last assured that her hospitality has received ample justice. It is time to go, for there is a nine miles’ tramp across the island yet to be done.
Wait a little! The good woman and her husband will see us to the hill by a short path through their fields. She will “just put a peat on the fire first.”
Sweet the air is in the doorway, and peaceful is the hour! The sun is just setting beyond the Cantyre hills, and out there, over the water, the lonely peaks of Arran are purple in the evening light. Scarcely a cloud lingers in the clear green sky, and the calm sea stirs but at intervals with the incoming of the tide. The tan-brown sails of the fishing-boats that came out of Loch Ranza an hour ago have hardly moved a mile yet up Kilbrannan Sound. The rooks have gone home to the Mount Stuart woods; the whirr of the reaping-machine in the corn-field over there has ceased; all the air is still. The grey smoke rising from thatched roofs here and there in the little strath tells that the evening meal is being prepared. Presently the darkness will come down, and the simple crofter hamlet by the shore will sink to rest. And the weary and the disappointed, soiled with the dust of the far-off city, striving all their lives after what they will never win, have forgotten that sweet bread may be earned on the cornlands, and fair fish caught in the sea; that there is music for listening, here by the murmuring brooks, and rest in the setting of the sun.
Soft shadows are gathering in the hollows of the hills, and the road rising inland through the quiet moors shows its white winding line among the heather. This wandering by-path, too, among the fields, is pleasant. Fitches are flowering yet, purple and yellow, in the hedges, as well as the delicate harebell--bluebell of Scotland--on the bank below. The wild poppies have mostly seeded now, but here and there a spot of flame tells where a late bloom lingers. Among the feathery grasses in this untouched corner of the field rich heads of the pink clover are still to be seen, and creamy tufted clouds of meadowsweet rise on their dark stems. Above, amid the prickly sprays of wild brier, the glossy hips are already a bright yellow, and on the uncut branches of the thorn clustering bunches of haws are becoming brown. Along the straight “rigs” of the corn-field here, where the crofter was shearing to-day, the dusky stooks of oats stand in long rows. The good man casts a pleased glance along their lines, for the straw is long this year, and the heads are heavy. There is a quiet satisfaction in the completion of a day’s work among the fields which never comes to the mere mercantile toiler. The ploughman strolls forth at night to gaze at the broad acres he has furrowed, and the eye of the reaper is rewarded with fair stooks of winnowing grain.