A Witch of the Hills
Florence Warden
A WITCH OF THE HILLS
BY
FLORENCE WARDEN
AUTHOR OF 'THE HOUSE ON THE MARSH,' ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1888
CONTENTS
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
[1]
A WITCH OF THE HILLS
CHAPTER I
Poor little witch! I think she left all herspells and love-philters behind her, when shelet herself be carried off from Ballater toBayswater, a spot where no sorcery morepoetical or more interesting than modernSpiritualism finds a congenial home. Whatwas her star about not to teach her thathuman hearts can beat as passionately upamong the quiet hills and the dark fir-forestsas down amid the rattle and the roar of thetown? Well, well; it is only in the grave[2]that we make no mistakes; and life andlove, God knows, are mysteries beyond theken of a chuckle-headed country gentleman,with just sense enough to handle a gun andland a salmon.
And the sum and substance of all this isthat the Deeside hills are very bleak inDecember, that the north wind sighs andsobs, whistles and howls among the raggedfirs and the bending larches in a mannerfearsome and eerie to a lonely man at hissilent fireside, and that books are but sorrysubstitutes for human companions when thedeer are safe in their winter retreat in theforests, and the grouse-moors are white withsnow. So here's for another pine-log on thefire, and a glance back at the fourteen yearswhich have slipped away since I shut thegates of the world behind me.
The world! The old leaven is still therethen, that after fourteen years of voluntary[3]—almostvoluntary—exile, I still call thatnarrow circle of a few hundreds of not particularlywise, not particularly interestingpeople—the world! They were wise enoughand interesting enough for me at three andtwenty, though, when by the death of myelder brother I leapt at once from an irksomestruggle, with expensive tastes, on a stingyallowance of three hundred a year, to the fullenjoyment of an income of eight thousand.
How fully I appreciated the delights ofthat sudden change fr