It was a Lover and his Lass. Oliphant Margaret
loudly on the window, "here's the gentleman coming with you, Adam."
This way of getting him out of the house amused Lewis greatly. He did not resist it, indeed the sun was shining so brightly, yet the air was so cool and sweet, a combination little known to the stranger, that he had already felt his blood frisking in his veins. Adam was going leisurely along, with his basket slung around him, and a great machinery of rods and lines over his shoulder. He scarcely paused to let Lewis come up with him, and all he said by way of salutation was, "Ye've nae rod," said somewhat sulkily, Lewis thought, out of the depths of his beard and his chest. And it cannot be said that the description of Janet was very closely fulfilled. Adam was much intent upon his work. If he could be "diverting" when he was in the humour, he was not in the humour to-day.
He led the way down the riverside with scarcely a word, and crossing the unsheltered meadow which lay along the bank, with only a few trees on the edge, soon got within the shelter of the woods. Tay was smooth and smiling as he passed by the meadows and the village; a few yards up the stream there was a ferry, with a large boat, intended to carry horses and carriages over the water, but here, where the fisherman established himself, the placid reach ended abruptly in rapids, rushing among huge boulders, through which the water foamed and fretted, with cliffs rising high on the opposite bank, and an abundance of great trees bending over the water's edge and on the bank, and nodding from the cliff that looked like a ruined tower.
"I was about to ask you if you had much boating here," Lewis said, with a laugh; "but Nature seems to have stopped that."
"You'll no boat much here," said the philosopher, grimly, which was not a profound remark.
He came to a pause upon a green bank, a little opening between the trees opposite the great cliff which reared itself like a great fortification out of the water. The village, the bit of level meadow, the stillness and serene air of comfort seemed to have passed away in a moment to give place to a mountain torrent, the dark water frowning and leaping against the rocks. Adam took some time to arrange all his paraphernalia, to fit his rod, and arrange his bait, during which time he did not deign to address a word to his companion, who watched him with curiosity, but, unfortunately, with a curiosity which was that of ignorance. After he had asked several questions which made this very distinct, the philosopher at last turned round upon him with a sort of slow defiance.
"You're no a fisher," he said. "What will have brocht ye here?"
This was to Adam the most simple and natural of questions; but it somewhat disturbed Lewis, who was conscious of intentions not perfectly straightforward. Necessity, which is the best quickener of wit, came to his aid. He bethought himself of a little sketch-book he had in his pocket, and drew that out.
"There are other things than fishing to bring one into a beautiful country," he said.
"Oh, ay," said Adam, "if you're o' the airtist class – " Perhaps there was a shade of contempt in his tone. But, if so, he changed it quickly, with a respect for his companion's feelings, which was the height of politeness. "There's mony comes this way, but to my mind they should a' gang a wee further. We're naething in comparison with the real Highlands."
For nearly an hour he said no more; the little click of the reel, the sweep of the water, the occasional leap of a fish, the multitudinous hum of insects were all the sounds about. Lewis seated himself on the grass, and began to justify his title of artist by beginning a sketch at once. He had a pretty amateur talent, and could accomplish without much difficulty the kind of sketch which seems to promise great things. The promise was never fulfilled, but that mattered little. The bold cliff opposite, the mass of rock half way across the stream, which at that point lashed the rapid water into fury, the deeper shadow under the bank, the blaze of light where the trees opened, and flickering intermixture of light and shade where the foliage was thicker, gave exactly the picturesque effect necessary for such a composition as amateurs love.
As he sat on the grass, sketching this unfamiliar landscape, with the silent figure by his side, manipulating his line, and the rush of the water in his ears like a new language, Lewis could not but smile to himself at the strange revolution in his own thoughts and surroundings. His connections had been entirely urban. Old historical towers, churches, and palaces had been the shrines at which he had paid his devotions. Of Nature he knew next to nothing, and to think that his first acquaintance with her should be made on the banks of the Tay was strange indeed. The Tiber would have been more likely, that yellow stream to which its sons paid a most undeserved compliment when they hailed the noble Tay as its resemblance. But there was something in the coolness and sweetness of this still hour which moved Lewis strangely. He had been more used to the cicali in the trees than to the endless twitter of the northern woods, the perpetual concert in which "the mavis and the merle were singing," and to avoid the grass as perhaps full of snakes, and to fear the sun as it is feared where its fury gives sudden death. He sat in the full blaze of it now with a pleased abandonment of all precautions. It was altogether like a pleasant dream.
"Is that a house behind the cliff high up among those trees?" he said. He could not help thinking of a similar corner of old masonry peering through the olive groves on a slope of the Apennines; but how different this was! "And who may live there, I wonder?" he added, pausing to look sideways at his sketch, in the true artistic pose.
Adam was very busy at that moment; he gave a sort of oblique glance upwards from the corner of his eyes, but he was struggling with his first fish, which was far too important a crisis to be mixed up with talk, or vain answers to useless questions. It was not till he had pulled out his prize, and deposited the glistening, gasping trout upon the grass with a grunt of fatigue and satisfaction, that he took any notice of what his companion said. Lewis got up to look at it as it leaped its last in a convulsive flutter. He was no sportsman – indeed, he was so little of his race that the sight of dying was painful to him even in this uninteresting example. But he knew better than to show this.
"That's a fine ane," said Adam – "no so big as mony, but a strong creature; he has most strained my wrist wi' his acteevity. Ye were asking what house is yon. It is old Stormont Tower, a bit poor place, but as old as the hills themselves. You that makes pictures, did ye ever see a bonnier picture than that?"
"Is it for the value of the fish or the pleasure of catching it," said Lewis, "that you put a stop to its enjoyment? That's a more pleasant picture, I think," and he pointed to the sudden gleam of a salmon leaping in the middle of the stream.
Adam cast a glance at him of mingled curiosity and disdain.
"I said ye were nae fisher the first look I got at ye," he said. "And ye find more pleasure in making scarts upon paper than in sport?" he added, a minute after, in a solemn tone.
"At least, the scarts on the paper do no one any harm," said Lewis, laughing. But he acknowledged the ineffectualness of his occupation by forthwith putting away his sketch-book.
Adam saw this too with the corner of his eye, and apparently was mollified by the withdrawal of that peaceful competitor Art from the regions sacred to a stouter occupation. After a while, he spoke again,
"Sport," he said, "I'll no deny, is a mystery. That ye should take your pleasure in what's pain and death to another poor creature, maybe just as good as yoursel' – it's a real funny thing when you come to think o't. I can gi'e no explanation. I've taken mony a thought on the subject mysel'. That's how we're made, I suppose – to see the thing fecht for its life, that's your pleasure, and to battle wi' 't and get the upper hand. I canna be sorry for a trout," he said, casting a slow glance at the fish; "it's just made for a man's dinner, and that's the short and the long of it; but a deer, now – a grand creature, carrying yon muckle horns like a king his crown, and a wheen skulking murderers lying in wait for him, letting fly when the poor beast comes up unsuspecting! I'm not a deer-stalker," said Adam, with more simplicity than philosophy, making up
"For sins he was inclined to
By d – ning those he had no mind to,"
"and I just canna bide yon."
Upon which he cast his line once more, and Lewis, though he did not feel any pleasure in the sight of the last convulsions, began to watch with interest, which gradually grew into excitement, the skill with which Adam plied his trade, the cunning