He was warming to his work. There was a vibration in his voice, as he proceeded to repeat the lines--
"From the lone shieling on the misty island, Mountains divide them and a world of seas; But still their hearts are true, their hearts are Highland, And they in dreams behold the Hebrides."
"Is that by one of your Scotch-American friends?" Lord Musselburgh asked, with a smile; for he was looking curiously, and not without a certain sympathetic interest, at this old man.
"I do not know, your lordship; at the moment I could not tell you," was the answer. "But this I do know, that a man may be none the less a good Canadian or American citizen because of his love for the heather hills that nourished his infancy, and inspired his earliest imagination. He does not complain of the country that has given him shelter, nor of the people who have welcomed him and made him one of themselves. He only says with Crichton's emigrant shepherd--
--'twined' is severed: perhaps your lordship is not so familiar with the dialect--
"'Wae's me that fate us twa has twined; And I serve strangers ower the sea; Their hearts are leal, their words are kind, But, lass, it isna hame to me!'
Good men they are and true," he went on, in the same exalted strain; "valued and respected citizens--none more so; but cut their hearts open, and you will find _Scotland_ written in every fibre. It is through no ingratitude to their adopted country that a spray of white heather, a few bluebells, a gowan or two, anything sent across the seas to them to remind them of the land of their birth, will bring hot tears to their eyes. As one of them has written--
'What memories dear of that cot ye recall, Though now there remains neither rooftree nor wall! Alack-a-day! lintel and threshold are gone, While cold 'neath the weeds lies the hallowed hearthstone! 'Twas a straw-roofed cottage, but love abode there, And peace and contentment aye breathed in its air; With songs from the mother, and legends from sire, How blithe were we all round the cheery peat-fire! --Caledonia's blue-bells, O bonnie blue-bells!'"
"You have an excellent memory," Lord Musselburgh said, good-naturedly. "Those patriotic effusions seem to have impressed you."