The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-01-28
LADY MAC TAvITT'S WIG.
TALES OF TEN TRAvELERS"* SERIES.
Ry EDGAR /. WAKEMAN.
.lcopyright, 1904. Al rights reseryed)


Il was the Srathglass, or gray valley"
of the ancient Gaels; nearly always gray
in the skies above it; gray in its valley
bed where the stubble-fields, banks of
CLAW and dreamful winding river blend;
gray despite its splatches Of crimson laid
by the witching pencils of the early frost
gray in its masses of birch. in its myriad
lichened crags; and almost gray in the
very mists of its boundless mournful
waterfalls.
At the edge of a great crag overhanging
the northern valley highway, where the
strath breaks away into the sunny Glen
Cannach to the southwest, and the higher,
gloomier, grander Glen Affrick TO the
northwest, two persons were standing in
the warm sunlight of an early September
day.
one was the young artist, Hugh Rit-
chic, guest among a score of titled folk
at Lord Glebemoths hunting lodge,
Guesachan, at the edge of Glen Cannach.
He had lust finished his last study for his
great landscape of Strathglass, which
now hangs in the national gallery at
London
The other was highland lassie, Joan
Saunders, who, TO the scorn and envy of
been his inseparable companion in his
summer sketchngs which had all been
made from this overhanging cliff above
her own roadside cottage home below.
The artist had just handed the girl a
roll of sketches and was standing with
one arm around the trunk of a dwarfed
fir, leaning forward with shaded eyes to
lastingly impress the scene with its min
utes detail of nature touch and tint upon
bis memory.
Joan was waiting behind him, calmly
gazing as if from simple habit wherever
the artist might gaze, but with some
thing like look Of settled, hopeless pa
thence in her face; a fine, frank, honest
face, perhaps more beautiful for a certain
was in which she poised her head out
ward, betOkening expectancy; upward,
as if her nature was strong from storms
that had been, TO brave all storms to come.
What glorious scenes were those they
looked upon! For score of miles the
entire southern horizon of the strath was
a serrated edge of tir-crowned mountain
nights, above eScarpments of steel-gray
stone; of lichened masses of rock and Of
dead trees uprooted by bowling tempests /;
of alder, oak and birch, like hanging
banks of moss in the distance; of frs so
darkly green that they took on the guise
of upright beds of purple heather, here
and there furrowed by foaming water
falls; all these giving place in the east TO
mountain masses in gigantic swaths, or
like emerald headlands in endless success
sion above some peaceful shore, advanc-
ing, retreating, and with interstices Of
opaline hue, where the glens and mighty
ehasms were; as if color in nature
throbbed and ebbed until it faded in
langourous death in blue, and purple and
ghostly mist
To the west were strath and mountain
views more glorious still. From the
north a wild torrent poured out of Glen
Cannach through gorge so deep and
vast that even the roaring of the waters
was muffled and still. Thousands of feet
above doomed grand Knockfin, its summit
girdled with castle-like walls of stone
Beyond, uplands rose and rolled match
less valley ascents to lone Glen Affrick' S
wilds.
Far in the north Ben Wyvis, giant
monarch of the region, thrust its grizzled
cone above stately mountain piles. Nam
Suil, 'hill of the eye" stood guard in the
west; while the whole far horizon be-
yond, pierced by hundreds of grim old
peaks wreathed in endless bands and
wings of mist, seemed like some vast
archipelago of massive crags endlessly
beaten by the spume of laundering seas.
Glittering peak, blanched cliff and
threatening precipice, burst through the
heather and sea green copse Away
among the heights the eagle wheeled
above the gorges, calling to the echoing
peaks for companionship in its solitudes.
Tumbling burns quivered and flashed, or
showed cascades like fecks of lace from
within the shadows. And over all songs
of rivulet, burn and river, over covert,
copse and glen, over islet, bog and tarn,
flooded the September sunshine, painting
for the artist and the lassie there, the
whole transcendent scene in unbound
dyes.
The artist turned from the wondrous
panorama as if almost despairingo OF trans
ferring its ever-changing seemings and
hues to canvas, and shaking his head
sadly, said gravely to the girl:
Joan, | am afraid we can never do it !''
The word I'VE" sent the blood into her
face grandly.
Gin yam misdoubts theirsels-"
Don't say GIN Joan. Say 'if in
stead"
"Gif-n
There, there, Joan. Remember gift
is worse than gin"
Il ken ma ither way, when 1 speyk DOT
my hearts thochts, Meester Richie, u
she replied, bridling up little. "Ablins
eef yam misdoubts theirSel, they re
already half whippit. TIL Laird ha
glen We MIGHTY geefts, Hugh. Dinna
fiyte i His face Wi sic chirmins and
an tn wark's bit dinr'
True enough, Joan; true enough
Upon my honor. believe you could paint
Strathglass yourself. l could, too, if
could have you with me all the time"
''Ye can ha' me, an We wull!"
She said it as impassively as she would
have said it was about to rain, the river
was low, or that she heard her old father
by adoption, singing a Gaelic song of wal
down there in his half cottage, half store
by the roadside beneath them.
But what of my art, of London, Of
fame, Joan2' He said it fairly like ar
honest man that he was, naming his OWE
strength and weakness without stint
''Ye Gamma hs' "a, Hugh Richie.
wull bide i Strathglass."
Bless you for noble girl, Joan. If
can put this valley on canvas, and / will
III be free of poverty's clutches forever
Then, he continued, grasping her hands
heartily, I'm be back here in a jify buy
Davy Saunders little croft for you and
and we'll let the great folk"-this with
an impatient motion of his head toward
turreted Guesachan at the edge of Glen
Cannach-"Londona and all the world &c
TO the dell together"
He was about to follow his impetuous
speech with as impetuous an embrace,
but Joan gently kept him at distance
answering quietly with eyes and speech:
ma. ma; when tn MIGHTY paintin' s
din, ye'u ne'er COON back"
He read there in her ewes and word G