Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/240

232 migrators hastening towards the south; but dark mists invested their morning progress. The rivers were swollen; and the mountain peaks often saluted the rising sun, garmented in radiant snow. It was a little drear, yet grand, sublime, wondrous. York suppressed his chilling distaste, till it grew into admiration; the king played the guide featly; and the honoured name of the Bruce, which peopled this region with proud memories, was the burthen of many a tale; nor was his account of the fierce people of these wilds unwelcome to a warrior. York remarked that the king was generally known to them, not, indeed, as a monarch, but as a hunter, a traveller, sometimes as a skilful mediciner, or as a bard, and always hospitably received.

After three days they drew near their journey's end: curiosity as fo the cause of their visit, anxiety concerning his reception, all faded in Richard's heart; dimmed by the glad expectation of seeing her again, who had dawned the glowing orient of his darkened heart. They had departed from their rude shelter before the sun rose: the mountain peaks were awake with day, while night still slumbered in the plain below: some natural sights speak to the heart more than others, wherefore we know not: the most eloquent is that of the birth of day on the untrodden hill-tops, while we, who behold it, are encompassed by shadows. York paused: the scene appeared to close in on him, and to fill him, even to overflowing, with its imagery. They were toiling up the mountain's side: below, above, the dark pines, in many a tortuous shape, clung to the rifted rocks; the fern clustered round some solitary old oak; while, beetling over, were dark frowning crags, or the foldings of the mountains, softened into upland, painted by the many coloured heather. With the steady pace of a mountaineer, King James breasted the hill-side; nor did York bely his rugged Spanish home. As a bravado, the king, in the very sheer ascent, trolled a ballad, a wild Scottish song, and Richard answered by a few notes of a Moorish air. A voice seemed to answer him, not an echo, for it was not his own, but taking the thrilling sweetness of Monina's tones. Ah! ungentle waves, and untaught winds, whither bear ye now the soft nursling of Andalusia? Such a thought darkened York's brow; when the king, pausing in his toil, leaned against a jutting crag—both young, both gallant, both so noble and so beautiful; of what could they think—of what speak? Not of the well-governed realm of the one, nor the yet unconquered kingdom of the other; of such they might have spoken among statesmen and warriors, in palaces or on the tattle plain; but here, in this wild solitude, the vast theatre