A Witch of the Hills, v. 1-2

early visit. As soon as he made known to me the first day when he would be free, I summoned the rest, and not one of them had ever yet failed me. Fab

lmer, who came skipping along the garden towards me one morning about

were to be left in ignoranc

t on the moors all day, I am afraid you won't find the place much livelier than usual. I think,' I added, coming to the pith of the matter with some feeling of awkwardness, 'that you had better keep Miss Babiole more-more with you, while-while the gentlemen are h

ts would bring down upon me. Besides, though my four visitors were all old friends, and very good fellows, yet a pretty face may work such Circe-like wonders, even in the best of us, that I tho

e our best to keep in order for you, we shall be ready to pack up at any time. We can go to-morrow, if y

e object in making the suggestion I did was to prevent your being pestered with the attentions of a lot of rough sportsmen, who, when they were tired of shooting, would

little attention now, with much equanimity, even from a sportsman who "could find nothing better to do." Of course, I could expect no m

e woman would no

e!' I sugge

ere not, a daughter of mine would be perfec

off, spending the interval before my guests' arriv

having lain in wait for the former at King's Cross, and insisted on bearing him company during the entire journey. I met them at Ballater station at 2.15 in the aft

ry day on the river to keep a man in condition,' urged Mr. Fussell, who was fifty inch

up and down the confined area of the railway carriage, gesticulating violently with his hatbox, rug, gun, and various other unconsidered trifles. I guessed that they could only have travelled together from Aberdeen, for there had been no bloodshed. They had been having a little discussion on realism in art, of which Maurice Browne was an ar

cripples for cripples. It would be a curiosity, sir, and might attract crowds of morbid-minded people, besides cripples; but it would be none the less a disgusting and degraded exhibition, antagonistic to nature and truth, to which the feeblest "virtue

beautiful, and having once, as a complete stranger, very generously come to my aid in a difficulty, he felt ever after the natural and kindly human liking for a fellow-creature who has given one an opportunity of posing as the deputy of God. These two gentlemen, with their strong and aggressive opinions, formed the disturbing element in our yearly meeting, and, each being always at deadly feud with somebody else, might be reckoned on to keep the fun alive. Both talked to me, and me alone, on our way to the house, with such sly hits at one another as their wit or their malice could suggest. Fabian raved about the effects of descending sun on heather and pine-covered hills, Maur

ul companion, both very merry over some joke which had already made Mr. Fussell purple

to me. 'No society, nothing but books, books,-exce

at's this?'

didn't teach him the folly of bringing a band of ga

e, with a look of extreme pain,

orrowfully, and then began to dance the Highland

buttoned up his coat, and requesting Edgar to carry his bag, p

her daughter shelter for the winter in an unused cottage only provoked another explosion. It was understood that at these bachelor meetings

hoping to turn him at least into an ally. 'It's poor

n, he wailed: 'Oh, gentlemen, he is adding insult to injury; he is loading with ab

ow much winter?'

, until Fabian, stalking gravely up to Ferguson, who stood on the doorstep, pointed t

ings on in this neighbourhood. Tell me, on your word as a fellow-countryman, can these gentlemen and

n't come in, ye'll stand the loss of a varra good dinner,

said Fabian, enter

followed wi

erican school of fiction in which nothing ever happens, and in which nobody is anything in particular for long at a time. He hungrily devoured all the works of that desperately clever gentleman who maintains that 'a woman standing by a table is an incident,' and looked down from an eminence of six feet two of unqualified disdain on the 'battle, murder, and sudden death' sch

by Fabian, of Janet carrying dishes away to the kitchen. He heaved a sigh of reli

table was piled high with my private papers. Fabian looked hastily through these, and, observing, 'I don't see anything here we need keep,' tumbled them all into the grate where the fire, indispensable as evening draws on in the Highlands, was burning. Mechanically, I saved what I could, while Fabian's subversive orders were being carried out round me. After a few minutes' hard work, all my favourite objects w

with both the time and the words of his songs, and his belief that the louder one shouted the better one sang. When at last, crimson and panting, but proud of himself, he sat down amid the astonished comments of the company on the strength of the roof, Maurice Browne wailed forth in a cracked voice a rollicking Irish song to the accompaniment of 'Auld Robin Gray'; Fabian followed with no voice at all, but no end of expression, in a pathetic lovesong of his own composition, during which everybody went to look for some cigars he had in his overcoat pocket. I refused altogether to perform, and nobody pressed me

rned with the evening hours, for keeping his fellow-creatures out of the range of his wild gun. Maurice Browne made a good mixed bag of a hedgehog, a pee-wit, and a keeper's leg, and then complained that shooting was monotonous work. Edgar worked hard and gravely,

er by sketching, the latter by learning by heart, by means of chats with ostlers and shopkeepers, the chronique scandaleuse of the neighbourhood; in the evening he triumphantly informed me that the morals o

ning referred to, I came upon Fabian and the child together in my garden at the foot of the hill. He was fastening some roses in the front of her blue cotton frock, and when he had done so, and stepped back a few paces to admire the effect, he claimed a kiss as a reward for his trouble. She gave it him shyly but simply. She was only a c

biole and I, as soon as we've

delighted with this e

roceeded to devote his mornings to long rambles with 'the child,' and his afternoons to making sketches of 'the child,' I thought his attentions would be much better bestowed on a grown-up person. But as Mrs. Ellmer saw nothing to censure in all this I could not interfere. It spoilt my