To all kinds of what are called hardships, he had readily become
inured, without which it would have been impossible for his love
of nature to receive such a full development. For hence he grew
capable of communion with her in all her moods, undisabled either
by the deadening effects of present, or the aversion consequent on
past suffering. All the range of earth's shows, from the grandeurs
of sunrise or thunderstorm down to the soft unfolding of a daisy
or the babbling birth of a spring, was to him an open book. It
is true, the delight of these things was constantly mingled with,
not unfrequently broken, indeed, by the troublous question of his
origin; but it was only on occasions of jarring contact with his
fellows, that it was accompanied by such agonies as my story has
represented. Sometimes he would sit on a rock, murmuring the words
over and over, and dabbling his bare feet, small and delicately
formed, in the translucent green of a tide abandoned pool. But
oftener in a soft dusky wind, he might have been heard uttering them
gently and coaxingly, as if he would wile from the evening zephyr
the secret of his birth--which surely mother Nature must know. The
confinement of such a man would have been in the highest degree
cruel, and must speedily have ended in death. Even Malcolm did
not know how absolute was the laird's need, not simply of air and
freedom, but of all things accompanying the enjoyment of them.
There was nothing then of insanity in his preference of a windowless
bedroom;--it was that airs and odours, birds and sunlight--the
sound of flapping wing, of breaking wave, and quivering throat,
might be free to enter.
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