LETTERS FROM AN OREGON RANCH
rolling stormily through the hills. That picture, with the roar of the mountain stream, is like a page from Ossian. The pool of memory is stirred. Half unconsciously we listen for the trembling harp-strings and tuneful voices of “aged bards with gray hair on the breeze,” for the horn of the hunter and the clash of steely mail.
If from out the tall pointed firs should come “slowly stalking dark-browed warriors with bossy shields and helmeted heads with red eyes rolling silently,” I’d blanch not, only stand with spiked pole uplifted and await the onslaught. As for those very thin, dim ghosts of Ardven, with robes of flying mist, I’d fear them as little “as the rising breeze that whirls the gray beard of the thistle.”
Having once surrendered to the mood inspired by the wild scenery of my beloved Oregon hills, I should feel little surprise if, at the next turn of our winding trail, we came face to face with “the fair maids of Woody Morven, with hair like the mist on Cromla, when it curls in the breeze and shines in the sun.” And even less should I be surprised, if through the tall fern thickets surrounding us should appear “the branching heads of dark-brown hinds, flying from stern hunters with bows of bended yew and the panting gray dogs—long-bounded sons of the chase.”
Di, as a devotee of Scott, thinks the stage setting calls for kilted Highlanders, with plumed bonnets and
206
