eside
his Flora's, and had soon become like her insensible to the night and
all its storms!

Bright was the peat-fire in the hut of Flora's parents in Glenco--and
they were among the happiest of the humbly happy, blessing this the
birthday of their blameless child. They thought of her singing her sweet
songs by the fireside of the hut in Glencreran--and tender thoughts of
her cousin Ranald were with them in their prayers. No warning came to
their ears in the sugh or the howl; for Fear it is that creates its own
ghosts, and all its own ghost-like visitings, and they had seen their
Flora in the meekness of the morning, setting forth on her way over the
quiet mountains, like a fawn to play. Sometimes too Love, who starts at
shadows as if they were of the grave, is strangely insensible to
realities that might well inspire dismay. So was it now with the
dwellers in the hut at the head of Glencreran. Their Ranald had left
them in the morning--night had come, and he and Flora were not
there--but the day had been almost like a summer-day, and in their
infatuation they never doubted that the happy creatures had changed
their minds, and that Flora had returned with him to Glenco. Ranald had
laughingly said, that haply he might surprise the people in that glen by
bringing back to them Flora on her birthday--and, strange though it
afterwards seemed to her to be, that belief prevented one single fear
from touching his mother's heart, and she and her husband that night lay
down in untroubled sleep.

And what could have been done for them, had they been told by some good
or evil spirit that their children were in the clutches of such a night?
As well seek for a single bark in the middle of the misty main! But the
inland storm had been seen brewing among the mountains round King's
House, and hut had communicated with hut, though far apart in regions
where the traveller sees no symptoms of human life. Down through the
long cliff-pass of Mealanumy, between Buachaille-Etive and the Black
Mount, towards the lone House of Dalness, that lives in everlasting
shadows, went a band of shepherds, trampling their way across a hundred
frozen streams. Dalness joined its strength--and then away over the
drift-bridged chasms toiled that Gathering, with their sheep-dogs
scouring the loose snows--in the van, Fingal the Red Reaver, with his
head aloft on the look-out for deer, grimly eyeing the Correi where last
he tasted blood. All "plaided in their t