Corporal Cameron | Page 8

on a summer day lies like a cup of gold; the gold all liquid and flowing over the cup's rim. And hence they call the glen "The Cuagh Oir," The Glen of the Cup of Gold.
At the bottom of the Cuagh, far down, a little loch gleams, an oval of emerald or of sapphire, according to the sky above that smiles into its depths. On dark days the loch can gloom, and in storm it can rage, white-lipped, just like the people of the Glen.
Around the emerald or sapphire loch farmlands lie sunny and warm, set about their steadings, and are on this spring day vivid with green, or rich in their red-browns where the soil lies waiting for the seed. Beyond the sunny fields the muirs of brown heather and bracken climb abruptly up to the dark-massed firs, and they to the Cuagh's rim. But from loch to rim, over field and muir and forest, the golden, liquid light ever flows on a sunny day and fills the Cuagh Oir till it runs over.
On the east side of the loch, among some ragged firs, a rambling Manor House, ivy-covered and ancient, stood; and behind it, some distance away, the red tiling of a farm-cottage, with its steading clustering near, could be seen. About the old Manor House the lawn and garden told of neglect and decay, but at the farmhouse order reigned. The trim little garden plot, the trim lawn, the trim walks and hedges, the trim thatch of the roof, the trim do'-cote above it, the trim stables, byres, barns and yard of the steading, proclaimed the prudent, thrifty care of a prudent, thrifty soul.
And there in the steading quadrangle, amidst the feathered creatures, hens, cocks and chicks, ducks, geese, turkeys and bubbly-jocks, stood the mistress of the Manor and prudent, thrifty manager of the farm,--a girl of nineteen, small, well-made, and trim as the farmhouse and its surroundings, with sunny locks and sunny face and sunny brown eyes. Her shapely hands were tanned and coarsened by the weather; her little feet were laced in stout country-made brogues; her dress was a plain brown winsey, kilted and belted open at the full round neck; the kerchief that had fallen from her sunny, tangled hair was of simple lawn, spotless and fresh; among her fowls she stood, a country lass in habit and occupation, but in face and form, in look and poise, a lady every inch of her. Dainty and daunty, sweet and strong, she stood, "the bonny like o' her bonny mither," as said the South Country nurse, Nannie, who had always lived at the Glen Cuagh House from the time that that mother was a baby; "but no' sae fine like," the nurse would add with a sigh. For she remembered ever the gentle airs and the high-bred, stately grace of Mary Robertson,--for though married to Captain Cameron of Erracht, Mary Robertson she continued to be to the Glen folk,--the lady of her ancestral manor, now for five years lain under the birch trees yonder by the church tower that looked out from its clustering firs and birches on the slope beyond the loch. Five years ago the gentle lady had passed from them, but like the liquid, golden sunlight, and like the perfume of the heather and the firs, the aroma of her saintly life still filled the Glen.
A year after that grief had fallen, Moira, her one daughter, "the bonny like o' her bonny mither, though no' sae fine," had somehow slipped into command of the House Farm, the only remaining portion of the wide demesne of farmlands once tributary to the House. And by the thrift which she learned from her South Country nurse in the care of her poultry and her pigs, and by her shrewd oversight of the thriftless, doddling Highland farmer and his more thriftless and more doddling womenfolk, she brought the farm to order and to a basis of profitable returns. And this, too, with so little "clash and claver" that her father only knew that somehow things were more comfortable about the place, and that there were fewer calls than formerly upon his purse for the upkeep of the House and home. Indeed, the less appeared Moira's management, both in the routine of the House and in the care of the farm, the more peacefully flowed the current of their life. It seriously annoyed the Captain at intervals when he came upon his daughter directing operations in barnyard or byre. That her directing meant anything more than a girlish meddling in matters that were his entire concern and about which he had already given or was about to give orders, the Captain never dreamed. That things about the House were somehow prospering in late years he set down