Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/460

454 === CHAPTER III. – "YOURS FOR LIFE OR DEATH" ===

Our young friends bivouacked that night among the hills on the banks of Lochrosque. With the morning's toil and the afternoon's excitement, they felt they had done at least as much as was good for them, and prudently determined to "camp out." The "shelter stone," shaped something like a Breton dolman, with its Cyclopean blocks of rugged granite, offered them very tolerable quarters. They supped lightly; they slept prosaically; they rose refreshed : so, hurrying them across the intervening bogs, we land them in sight of the house of Glenconan.

A great event had occurred in their absence. It is seldom that the master of a remote Highland residence has the chance of two thrilling sensations simultaneously; but that piece of fortune had happened to David Moray. While he was looking forward to a solitary dinner and a dull evening, his dearly loved daughter had turned up unexpectedly. Grace Moray had a dash of the romantic in her nature, and it pleased her to arrange a surprise for her father. The thought of the surprise that was in store for him beguiled the tediousness of a slow railway-journey; and as she paralysed the self-important station-master by her unexpected arrival, so she was enchanted to be thrown back on her own resources. It was a dramatically appropriate stage-introduction to her Highland home. The station-master offered her the hospitality of his cottage while a messenger was despatched for the paternal waggonette. The impetuous young woman would hear nothing of the kind. She pressed a "machine" from the neighbouring posting-house into her service, the horse having been captured with some difficulty in the unenclosed meadows where he was running loose. She mounted the machine with her maid, leaving the boxes to follow; and what between her excitement over the beauties of the drive, and her anticipations of the reception awaiting her, her rising spirits fairly ran away with her, overflowing in rapturous ejaculations and bright snatches of song.

She had hoped to delight her father, and she was amply satisfied. Moray, having made some changes in his toilet, had strolled out upon the gravel before sitting down to dinner: he cast an eye on the cart-track that led upwards toward Lochrosque, and turned away in slight disappointment. Although he had lived much alone in his time, he was naturally of a social disposition, and would have liked to have had dinner enlivened by a narrative of incident. When swinging round on his heel, before entering the hall, his eye was arrested by a vision on the lower road – a heavy dogcart was pulling up the steep, the driver walking by the horse's head; and in the carriage were fluttering female garments, while a white pocket-handkerchief was being flown by way of signal. He realised in a moment what had occurred, for the road the vehicle was following led nowhere except to Glenconan. Another moment, and he was striding hatless down the hill, as if he had started on a toe-and-heel match against time.

Grace Moray had arranged a semi-theatrical surprise, and the meeting made a very pretty tableau. On seeing an elderly gentleman come down at the double, the intelligent horse came promptly to a