The Cruise of the Snowbird: A Story of Arctic Adventure

The Young Chief of Arrandoon—The Rising Storm—Lost in the Snow. It was winter. Allan McGregor stood, gun in hand, leaning against a rock half-way down the mountain-side, and, with the exception of himself and the stately deer-hound that lay at his feet, there was no sign of any living thing in all the glen; and dreary and desolate in the extreme was the landscape all around him. Glentroom in the summer time, when the braes were all green with the feathery birches, and the hillsides ablaze with the purple bloom of the heather, must have been both pleasant and romantic; but the birch-trees were now leafless and bare, the mountains were clad in snow, and the rock-bound lake, that lay far beneath, was leaden and grey like the sky itself, except where its waves were broken into foam by the snow-wind. That snow-wind blew from the north, and there was a sound in its voice, as it sighed through the withered breckans and moaned fitfully among the rocks and crags, that told of a coming storm. Allan was the young laird of Arrandoon. All the glen had at one time belonged to his ancestors—ay, and all the land that could be seen, and all the lochs that could be counted from the peaks of Ben Lona. His father, but two short years before the commencement of this strange story of adventure, had died, sword in hand, at the head of his regiment in distant Afghan, and left him—what? A few thousand sheep, a few thousand acres of heather land on which to feed them, the title of chief, and yonder ancient castle, where dwelt his widowed mOther and his sister. Although he was a good Highland mile from his home, the castle, visible in every line and lineament from where he stood, formed quite a feature in the landscape. A tall grey building, with many a quaint and curious window, and many a turret chamber, it was built on the spur of the mountain, around which swept a brown hill-stream, the third side, or base of the triangle, being bounded by a moat now dry, and a drawbridge never raised. Far down beneath it was the grey loch, to which the noisy stream was hurrying