Kings of Carrick

So THE KINGS OF CARRICK.
screamed around, and the fierce westerly gales howled and
shrieked as they struck the promontory and rushed past into
the stretching forests behind. The Castle looked out on the
riotous domain of Father Neptune and saw the fates ride on
the breakers ; and many a gallant ship, bluff in stem and
square in stern, was ground in pieces on the jagged precipices
which caught the surge of the breakers.
In summer it was not so. The vista embraced a succession
of scenes, which for variety, beauty, and grandeur, could
hardly have been equalled. From conical Ailsa to the Cum-
braes, and on a specially clear day to Ben Lomond, nature
was represented mainly in its marine aspect ; Arran looming
up as the centre of the picture, and the yellow sands and
brown cliffs of Ayrshire doing duty in the foreground. But
the age was not scenic. The barons and knights of the times
were practical, fighting men ; scenery, or the cultivation of it
as an art, had not yet been invented ; and summer suns shone
and winter storms beat unnoticed, save and except they were
uncomfortably warm or exceptionally boisterous, as the case
might -be. The blasts of Boreas, rude, blustering, and fitful,
were the true prototype of the age ; and the seething Firth of
Clyde was not more restless than was the surface of Ayrshire
society and the ambitions and plots of the leading actors in
the historic drama.
The scene that enrolled itself to Sir Thomas Kennedy that
fine May morning as he rode away from the Castle, was all
well known to him. Everything had a familiar aspect.
Every rock and scaur and undulation on the tortuous coast
was an old acquaintance ; he knew every indentation, every
round knoll, every copse and dell on Carrick Hill. Arran
pierced the summer sky and threw its jagged peaks into the
reflective glass of the estuary; and full well he knew it.
Even the sea birds, these restless, tireless creatures, which
never seem out of place, but which never seem to feel exactly
in it, looked like old friends. Mochrum Hill looked exactly