‘And what were the fortunes of the other characters in your sad story?’ I asked of the chief.
‘Oh! You see that cottage over there with the sweet bit of garden in front, ornamented with rockeries and ferns? That is the home of Archie Guthrie and his wife, _née_ Effie Stewart. The fairy scarcely deserves the name now, having lost much of her elfish slenderness and activity, but is after all, perhaps, a prettier heroine as the gardener’s wife, and less dangerous to my young male subjects. A coquette she certainly never was; but discreet and prudent to a rare degree. I am at a loss to divine _what_ the source of her strange power was, but am thankful she is now Mrs Guthrie.’
‘As for Stewart,’ continued Inchgarry, ‘he has married well—the daughter of one of my wealthiest tenants. Grantoch has got a chief charge on an estate in the West Highlands, taking with him the buxom servant whom Stewart brought from Badenoch. So you see they are all doing well. And for my own part, the revelations which were made at the time of the tragedy fully awakened me to the duty of weighing carefully the complaints of my “people,” and of charily guarding against too free an investiture of power over them to an ignorant, malicious, or interested servant. I spend more time here than formerly, and am gratified by the increased contentment and prosperity of those under my care. The story, you will now perceive, though sad, is not without its moral.’
Aërial navigation, the faculty of locomotion through the air, the power of soaring bird-like into the azure fields of space, has always been tantalisingly seductive to the human imagination. So engrossing is the theme, that although the subject has already been discussed from a scientific point of view in these pages, a few additional words about its more popular aspects may not be found uninteresting to our readers.
Great, and, as it has proved, baseless anticipations were evoked by the advent of the first balloon. Aërostation was to disclose the secrets of the atmospheric world, and by enabling men to predict rains and droughts, secure by the proper cultivation of the soil abundant and excellent harvests. The unmanageable nature of the new invention was not taken into account at all, nor the fact, that although you might ascend into the air from any point you chose, no one could predict where or how you would descend. This charming uncertainty still attends aërial voyages; no means have yet been discovered of guiding the balloon in a horizontal direction; and it is always so much at the mercy of currents of air, that the course it will follow is a matter of chance, and not an affair of the aëronaut’s will or choice.