The Inheritance Author:Susan Ferrier Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. ' My father's house! Send me not thence Dishonour, but to wealth, to greatness rals'd." Sophocles. It was on a lovely evening that the tra... more »vellers reached their destination near the western coast of Scotland. The air was soft, and the setting sun shed his purple light on the mountains which formed the back-ground of the Rossville domains. The approach wound along the side of a river, which possessed all the characteristic variety of a Scottish stream—now gliding silently along, or seeming to stand motionless in the crystal depth of some shaded pool—now chafing and gurgling, with lulling sound, over its pebbly bed—while its steep banks presented no less changing features. In some places they were covered with wood, now in the first tints of Spring—the formal poplar's pale hue, and the fringed larch's tender green mingling with the red seared leaf of the oak, and the brown opening bud of the sycamore. In others, grey rocks peeped from amidst the lichens and creeping plants which covered them as with a garment of many colours, and the wild rose decked them with its transient blossoms. Farther on the banks became less precipitous, and gradually sunk into a gentle slope, covered with smooth green turf, and sprinkled with trees of noble size. The only sounds that mingled with the rush of the stream were the rich full song of the blackbird, the plaintive murmur of the wood pigeon, and the abrupt, but not unmusical, note of the cuckoo. Gertrude gazed with ecstasy on all around, and her heart swelled with delight as she thought, this fair scene she was destined to inherit; and a vague poeticalfeeling of love and gratitude to Heaven caused her to raise her eyes, swimming in tearful rapture, to the giver of all good. But it was merely the overflowing of a young, enra...« less