On the side of the loch, when we emerged from the hills, there was a cluster of whin-bushes spread out upon a machar of land that in a less rigorous season of the year, by the feel of the shoe-sole, must be velvet-piled with salty grass. It lay in the clear, grey forenoon like a garden of fairydom to the view--the whin-bushes at a distant glance floating on billows of snow, touched at their lee by a cheering green, hung to the windward with the silver of the snow, and some of them even prinked off with the gold flower that gives rise to the proverb about kissing being out of fashion when the whin wants bloom. To come on this silent, peaceful, magic territory, fresh out of the turmoil of a battle, was to be in a region haunted, in the borderland of morning dreams, where care is a vague and far-off memory, and the elements study our desires. The lake spread out before us without a ripple, its selvedge at the shore repeating the picture on the brae. I looked on it with a mind peculiarly calm, rejoicing in its aspect Oh, love and the coming years, thought I, let them be here or somewhere like it--not among the savage of the hills, fighting, plotting, contriving; not among snow-swept mounts and crying and wailing brooks, but by the sedate and tranquil sea in calm weather. As we walked, my friends with furtive looks to this side and yon, down to the shore, I kept my face to the hills of real Argile, and my heart was full of love. I got that glimpse that comes to most of us (had we the wit to comprehend it) of the future of my life. I beheld in a wave of the emotion the picture of my coming years, going down from day to day very unadventurous and calm, spent in some peaceful valley by a lake, sitting at no rich-laden board but at bien and happy viands with some neighbour heart A little bird of hope fluted within me, so that I knew that if every clan in this countryside was arraigned against me, I had the breastplate of fate on my breast “I shall not die in this unfriendly country,” I promised myself. “There may be terror, and there may be gloom, but I shall watch my children’s children play upon the braes of Shira Glen.” “You are very joco,” said John to me as I broke into a little laugh of content with myself. “It’s the first time you ever charged me with jocosity, John,” I said “I’m just kind of happy thinking.” “Yon spectacle behind us is not humorous to my notion,” said he, “whatever it may be to yours. And perhaps the laugh may be on the other side of your face before the night comes. We are here in a spider’s web.” “I cry pardon for my lightness, John,” I answered; “I’ll have time enough to sorrow over the clan of Argile. But if you had the Sight of your future, and it lay in other and happier scenes than these, would you not feel something of a gaiety?”