The novels of Susan Edmonstone Ferrier 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: invitation from the old laird to spend the winter with them at Glenfern Castle. All impatience to quit the scenes of their short-lived felicity, they bade a h... more »asty adieu to the now fading beauties of Windermere ; and, full of hope and expectation, eagerly turned towards the bleak hills of Scotland. They stopped for a short time at Edinburgh, to provide themselves with a carriage and some other necessaries. There, too, they fortunately met with an English Abigail and footman, who, for double wages, were prevailed upon to attend them to the Highlands ; which, with the addition of two dogs, a tame squirrel, and mackaw, completed the establishment. What transport to retrace our early plays, Our early bliss, when each thing joy supplied ; The woods, the mountains, and the warbling maze Of the wild brooks. Thomson. MANY were the dreary muirs, and rugged mountains, her ladyship had to encounter in her progress to Glenfern Castle ; and, but for the hope of the new world that awaited her beyond those formidable barriers, her delicate frame, and still more sensitive feelings, must have sunk beneath the horrors of such a journey. But she remembered the duchess had said the inns and roads were execrable ; and the face of the country, as well as the lower orders of people, frightful: but what signified those things ? There were balls, and rowing matches, and sailing parties, and shooting parties, and fishing parties, and parties of every description : and the certainty of being recompensed by the festivities ofGlenfern Castle reconciled her to the ruggedness of the approach. Douglas had left his paternal home and native hills when only eight years of age. A rich relation of his mother's, happening to visit them at that time, took a fancy to the boy; and, under promise of making him...« less