Dear are the thousand streams that sing Down to the sunny sea, But dearer to my longing heart Were one bright hour with thee. HELEN MARION BURNSIDE. It was toward evening, at the close of a lovely September day, that a rough equipage laden with luggage, with a black retriever gamboling joyously beside it, crept rather slowly down the long lovely road by the Deeside leading to Rowan-Glen, one of those rare gems of Highland scenery that are set so ruggedly in the Cairngorm Mountains. Fay had just sheltered her sleeping baby from the rays of the setting sun; and sat wearily in the jolting carriage, trying to recall all the familiar landmarks that greeted her eyes. There were the grounds and preserves of Moncrieff, with their lovely fringes of dark pine-trees and silvery birches, and a little further on the wicket gate that led down to the falls or linn of Rowan-Glen. By and by came a few low cottages built of graystone, and thatched with heather fastened down with a rough network of ropes. One or two of them were covered with honeysuckle and clematis, and had tiny gardens filled with vegetables and flowers, pinks and roses mingling in friendly confusion with gooseberry bushes and cabbages. A narrow planked passage ran through the cottages, with a door at the other end opening on to a small field, with the usual cow-house, peat and straw stacks, and a little shed inhabited by a few scraggy cocks and hens which, with "ta coo" herself, are the household property of all, even the poorest, of the Highland peasants. Fay looked eagerly past them, and for a moment forgot her trouble and weariness; for there, in the distance, as they turned the corner, stretched the long irregular range of the Cairngorm Mountains, with the dark shadow of the Forest of Mar at their base; while to the right, far above the lesser and more fertile hills, rose the snowy heads of those stately patriarchs--Ben-muich-dhui and Ben-na-bourd. Oh, those glorious Highland mountains, with their rugged peaks, against which the fretted clouds "get wrecked and go to pieces." What a glory, what a miracle they are! On sunny mornings with their infinity of wondrous color so softly, so harmoniously blended; now changing like an opal with every cloud that sails over them, and now with deep violet shadows haunting their hollows, sunny breaks and necks, and long glowing stretches of heather. Well has Jean Ingelow sung of them: "... White raiment, the ghostly capes that screen them, Of the storm winds that beat them, their thunder rents and scars, And the paradise of purple, and the golden slopes atween them;" for surely there could not be a grander or fairer scene on God's earth than this. A moment later the vehicle stopped before a white gate set in a hedge of tall laurels and arbutus, and the driver got down and came round to the window. "Yonder's t' Manse. Will I carry in the boxes for the leddy?"