The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

296 The Highland Monthly.
folds and booths, where tuneful voices once poured forth
strains of melody, that arose in after years in lands far
away. Often, when alone in this most beautiful and peace-
ful scene, have I well-nigh melted into tears of tender regret,
while no sound could be heard save the shepherd's whistle,
or the barking of his dog, or the bleating of the ewes and
Iambs. The rest and quietness of an eternal Sabbath
surely would most harmonise with the prevailing spirit of
that scene. No one could listen to the songs and tales of
Ishbal Macindrui without feeling their influence here. While
her father lived at Inverbeltane, she had spent the greater
part of every grazing season at those shealings, and many
old memories remained to her of loves, and joys, and
sorrows, that filled the hearts of their occupants, now
mouldering in the dust. Ihe shealings had all passed
away ; so had all the homes at Inverbeltane ; and the little
cot which she occasionally occupied there, was now the only
dwelling within the bounds of a township where she remembered
twenty families to have been reared. Close to it was
a clump of rowan trees, which her brothers had planted
before they took their departure for the New World. And
within view from that spot, on a rising ground at the head
of Lochgoy, was the graveyard of St Eonan, where the
Macindruis of Inverbeltane had buried their dead for
countless generations, and she knew that no grave would
evermore be opened there, except for herself and her aged
brother at Balmosses, when the last of the Macindruis would
have passed away.
But now it is full time that, without further ado, I withdrew
from those sweet scenes, which memory depicts
bathed in the brightness of a perpetual summer morning,
and introduce the reader to that abode which was to me
as the life and centre of the whole ; from whence, ere yet
my thinking personality fairly took form, I looked abroad
upon the world of moor, and hill, and stream, and wood,
watching the changing face of nature, the constant altera-