and set forward. Alan was in excellent good spirits, much
refreshed by his sleep, very hungry, and looking pleasantly forward to a
dram and a dish of hot collops, of which, it seems, the messenger had
brought him word. For my part, it made me sick to hear of eating. I had
been dead-heavy before, and now I felt a kind of dreadful lightness,
which would not suffer me to walk. I drifted like a gossamer; the ground
seemed to me a cloud, the hills a feather-weight, the air to have a
current, like a running burn, which carried me to and fro. With all
that, a sort of horror of despair sat on my mind, so that I could have
wept at my own helplessness.

I saw Alan knitting his brows at me, and supposed it was in anger; and
that gave me a pang of light-headed fear, like what a child may have. I
remember, too, that I was smiling, and could not stop smiling, hard as I
tried; for I thought it was out of place at such a time. But my good
companion had nothing in his mind but kindness; and the next moment two
of the gillies had me by the arms, and I began to be carried forward
with great swiftness (or so it appeared to me, although I daresay it was
slowly enough in truth), through a labyrinth of dreary glens and
hollows, and into the heart of that dismal mountain of Ben Alder.

FOOTNOTE:

[27] Village fair.

CHAPTER XXIII

CLUNY'S CAGE

We came at last to the foot of an exceeding steep wood, which scrambled
up a craggy hill-side, and was crowned by a naked precipice.

"It's here," said one of the guides, and we struck up hill.

The trees clung upon the slope, like sailors on the shrouds of a ship;
and their trunks were like the rounds of a ladder, by which we mounted.

Quite at the top, and just before the rocky face of the cliff sprang
above the foliage, we found that strange house which was known in the
country as "Cluny's Cage." The trunks of several trees had been wattled
across, the intervals strengthened with stakes, and the ground behind
this barricade levelled up with earth to make the floor. A tree, which
grew out from the hillside, was the living centre-beam of the roof. The
walls were of wattle and covered with moss. The whole house had
something of an egg-shape; and it half hung, half stood in that steep,
hill-side thicket, like a wasps' nest in a green hawthorn.

Within, it was large enough to shelter five or six persons with some
comfort. A projection of the cliff had been cunningly employed to be