Chapter 7

Proud bird of the mountain, thy plume shall be torn!--
. . . .
Return to thy dwelling; all lonely, return;
For the blackness of ashes shall mark where it stood,
And a wild mother scream o'er her famishing brood.--CAMPBELL.

The night continued sullen and stormy; but morning rose as if refreshed
by the rains. Even the Mucklestane-Moor, with its broad bleak swells of
barren grounds, interspersed with marshy pools of water, seemed to smile
under the serene influence of the sky, just as good-humour can spread
a certain inexpressible charm over the plainest human countenance.
The heath was in its thickest and deepest bloom. The bees, which the
Solitary had added to his rural establishment, were abroad and on the
wing, and filled the air with the murmurs of their industry. As the old
man crept out of his little hut, his two she-goats came to meet him, and
licked his hands in gratitude for the vegetables with which he supplied
them from his garden. "You, at least," he said--"you, at least, see no
differences in form which can alter your feelings to a benefactor--to
you, the finest shape that ever statuary moulded would be an object
of indifference or of alarm, should it present itself instead of the
mis-shapen trunk to whose services you are accustomed. While I was in
the world, did I ever meet with such a return of gratitude? No; the
domestic whom I had bred from infancy made mouths at me as he stood
behind my chair; the friend whom I had supported with my fortune, and
for whose sake I had even stained--(he stopped with a strong convulsive
shudder), even he thought me more fit for the society of lunatics--for
their disgraceful restraints--for their cruel privations, than for
communication with the rest of humanity. Hubert alone--and Hubert too
will one day abandon me. All are of a piece, one mass of wickedness,
selfishness, and ingratitude--wretches, who sin even in their devotions;
and of such hardness of heart, that they do not, without hypocrisy, even
thank the Deity himself for his warm sun and pure air."

As he was plunged in these gloomy soliloquies, he heard the tramp of a
horse on the other side of his enclosure, and a strong clear bass voice
singing with the liveliness inspired by a light heart,

Canny Hobbie Elliot, canny Hobbie now,
Canny Hobbie Elliot, I'se gang alang wi' you.

At the same moment, a large deer greyhound sprung over the hermit's
fence. It is well known to the sportsmen in these wilds, that the
appearance and scent of the goat so much resemble those of their usual
objects of chase, that the best-broke greyhounds will sometimes fly upon
them. The dog in question instantly pulled down and throttled one of the
hermit's she-goats, while Hobbie Elliot,