Near my father's house there flowed a linn--a deep, dark linn, where the wee burnie poured over a ledge of rock; it was crossed by a large stone, and I remember the time when that brigstane was quite a bridge to me. I seemed to hear the murmur of the linn and the rustle of my paternal woods, and saw the white blossoms of the sweet-scented hawthorn birks that grew beneath the old tower wall. I heard the bleat of the sheep that browsed upon my father's hills; the rich perfume of the purple heather, and of the bells of that beautiful broom, from which the sweetest honey is gathered by the mountain bee, were wafted towards me. I heard my mother's gentle voice, but it seemed to come from a vast distance on the drowsy hum of summer, and all my soul was stirred within me. I was a child again, and I wept in my sleep like the lonely boy I was. I wept, but I knew not why, unless it were that through these tender visions there came an oppressive sense of their unreality. The past conflicted with the present, and I felt that I was far away from those dear hills of Cromartie, from the shores of their blue Firth, and the dusky peaks of the Black Isle--sick, weary, and wounded--a stranger in the land of the stranger and foe. Oh! I may be pardoned in thinking, that no heart like the heart of the Scot and the Switzer feel that dire loneliness when so far from home; and none like they are haunted by the strange sad fear, of being buried far from the graves of their kindred. Yet how many of our brave Scottish hearts have mouldered into dust on the plains of Flanders and Germany; by the shores of the Elbe and the Oder, the Rhine and the Danube, the Zoom and the Zuiderzee! When again I unclosed my eyes and gazed between the parted hangings of the bed, I perceived two young ladies at the foot of the apartment. They were conversing in a low tone, and placing flowers in a large vase. They were the daughters of the count; but as ladies have the privilege of giving the first recognition among us in Scotland, and as their presence in my apartment might be a mistake, I waited until they should address me. I observed that one was a fair girl, clad in that pale bine silk which so well becomes persons of her complexion; but the elder and the taller of the two, a beautiful girl with jetty hair, was dressed in orange-coloured satin, a tint which so well consorted with her dark hair and fine complexion. You would have loved the youngest had you seen her face, there was such a sweet expression in its pretty mouth and dove-like eyes; but the eldest--her form was beautiful, her features irreproachable, her profile was noble, and the freshness and delicacy of her complexion were remarkable. Her fashion of dress, her air, her mode of holding up her head, had something more of gentle blood in them than her sister; and though it would have been difficult to find two more lovely girls, each after her own style--the eldest seemed to be the proudest pet of nature.