So, one fine afternoon in June, Flora took it into her head, that she would climb to the top of the mountain, the sight of which from her chamber window she was never tired of contemplating. She asked her husband to go with her. She begged, she entreated, she coaxed; but he was just writing the last pages of his long task, and he told her, that if she would only wait until the next day, he would go with pleasure. But with Flora, it was this day or none. She had set her whole heart and soul upon going up to the top of the mountain, and to the top of the mountain she determined to go. This resolution was formed, in direct opposition to her husband’s wishes; and with a perfect knowledge of the tale of the dog Ball, which had been one of her father’s stock stories, the catastrophe of which she had known from a child. Lyndsay did not tell her positively she should not go without him; and unable to control her impatience, she gave him the slip, and set off with Jim, who was only too eager for the frolic, on her mountain climbing expedition. Flora was a native of a rich pastoral country; very beautiful in running brooks, smooth meadows, and majestic parks; where the fat sleek cattle so celebrated in the London markets, graze knee-deep in luxuriant pastures, and the fallow deer browse and gambol beneath the shadow of majestic oaks through the long bright summer days. She had never seen a mountain before her visit to the North, in her life; had never risen higher in the world than to the top of Shooter’s Hill; and when they arrived at the foot of this grand upheaving of nature, she began to think the task more formidable than she had imagined at a distance. Her young conductor, agile as a kid, bounded up the steep acclivity with as much ease as if he was running over a bowling-green. “Not so fast, Jim!” cried Flora, pausing to draw breath. “I cannot climb like you.” Jim was already beyond hearing, and was lying on the ground peering over a projecting crag at least two hundred feet above her head, and impishly laughing at the slow progress she made. “Now Jim! that’s cruel of you, to desert me in my hour of need,” said Flora, shaking her hand at the young mad-cap. “Lyndsay was right after all. I had better have waited till to-morrow.” Meanwhile, the path that wound round the mountain towards the summit became narrower and narrower, and the ascent more steep and difficult. Flora sat down upon a stone amid the ruins of the chapel to rest, and to enjoy the magnificent prospect. The contemplation of this sublime panorama for a while absorbed every other feeling. She was only alive to a keen sense of the beautiful; and while her eye rested on the lofty ranges of mountains to the north and south, or upon the broad bosom of the silver Forth, she no longer wondered at the enthusiastic admiration expressed by the bards of Scotland for their romantic land.