colour, the naked, unhomely, stony
country through which I was travelling, threw me into some despondency. I
promise you, the stick was not idle; I think every decent step that
Modestine took must have cost me at least two emphatic blows. There was
not another sound in the neighbourhood but that of my unwearying
bastinado.

Suddenly, in the midst of my toils, the load once more bit the dust, and,
as by enchantment, all the cords were simultaneously loosened, and the
road scattered with my dear possessions. The packing was to begin again
from the beginning; and as I had to invent a new and better system, I do
not doubt but I lost half an hour. It began to be dusk in earnest as I
reached a wilderness of turf and stones. It had the air of being a road
which should lead everywhere at the same time; and I was falling into
something not unlike despair when I saw two figures stalking towards me
over the stones. They walked one behind the other like tramps, but their
pace was remarkable. The son led the way, a tall, ill-made, sombre,
Scottish-looking man; the mother followed, all in her Sunday's best, with
an elegantly embroidered ribbon to her cap, and a new felt hat atop, and
proffering, as she strode along with kilted petticoats, a string of
obscene and blasphemous oaths.

I hailed the son, and asked him my direction. He pointed loosely west
and north-west, muttered an inaudible comment, and, without slackening
his pace for an instant, stalked on, as he was going, right athwart my
path. The mother followed without so much as raising her head. I
shouted and shouted after them, but they continued to scale the hillside,
and turned a deaf ear to my outcries. At last, leaving Modestine by
herself, I was constrained to run after them, hailing the while. They
stopped as I drew near, the mother still cursing; and I could see she was
a handsome, motherly, respectable-looking woman. The son once more
answered me roughly and inaudibly, and was for setting out again. But
this time I simply collared the mother, who was nearest me, and,
apologising for my violence, declared that I could not let them go until
they had put me on my road. They were neither of them offended--rather
mollified than otherwise; told me I had only to follow them; and then the
mother asked me what I wanted by the lake at such an hour. I replied, in
the Scottish manner, by inquiring if she had far to go herself. She told
me, with another oath, tha