ing ears. There
is a small flower trembling on its stem in some hidden nook beneath the
open sky, that never withers through all the changing years; the wind
passes over it, but it is not gone--it abides forever in your soul, an
amaranthine blossom of beauty and truth.

White heather is not an easy flower to find. You may look for it among
the highlands for a day without success. And when it is discovered,
there is little outward charm to commend it. It lacks the grace of the
dainty bells that hang so abundantly from the Erica Tetralix, and the
pink glow of the innumerable blossoms of the common heather. But then it
is a symbol. It is the Scotch Edelweiss. It means sincere affection,
and unselfish love, and tender wishes as pure as prayers. I shall always
remember the evening when I found the white heather on the moorland
above Glen Ericht. Or, rather, it was not I that found it (for I have
little luck in the discovery of good omens, and have never plucked a
four-leaved clover in my life), but my companion, the gentle Mistress
of the Glen, whose hair was as white as the tiny blossoms, and yet
whose eyes were far quicker than mine to see and name every flower that
bloomed in those lofty, widespread fields.

Ericht Water is formed by the marriage of two streams, one flowing out
of Strath Ardle and the other descending from Cairn Gowar through the
long, lonely Pass of Glenshee. The Ericht begins at the bridge of Cally,
and its placid, beautiful glen, unmarred by railway or factory, reaches
almost down to Blairgowrie. On the southern bank, but far above the
water, runs the high road to Braemar and the Linn of Dee. On the
other side of the river, nestling among the trees, is the low white
manor-house,

"An ancient home of peace."

It is a place where one who had been wearied and perchance sore wounded
in the battle of life might well desire to be carried, as Arthur to the
island valley of Avilion, for rest and healing.

I have no thought of renewing the conflicts and cares that filled that
summer with sorrow. There were fightings without and fears within;
there was the surrender of an enterprise that had been cherished since
boyhood, and the bitter sense of irremediable weakness that follows such
a reverse; there was a touch of that wrath with those we love, which, as
Coleridge says,

"Doth work like madness in the brain;"

flying across the sea from these troubles, I had found my old comrade of
merrier da