ned to the huts, and, after
having taken a second dinner of the food we had brought from Callander,
set our faces towards the head of Loch Ketterine. I can add nothing to
my former description of the Trossachs, except that we departed with our
old delightful remembrances endeared, and many new ones. The path or
road--for it was neither the one nor the other, but something between
both--is the pleasantest I have ever travelled in my life for the same
length of way,--now with marks of sledges or wheels, or none at all, bare
or green, as it might happen; now a little descent, now a level;
sometimes a shady lane, at others an open track through green pastures;
then again it would lead us into thick coppice-woods, which often
entirely shut out the lake, and again admitted it by glimpses. We have
never had a more delightful walk than this evening. Ben Lomond and the
three pointed-topped mountains of Loch Lomond, which we had seen from the
Garrison, were very majestic under the clear sky, the lake perfectly
calm, the air sweet and mild. I felt that it was much more interesting
to visit a place where we have been before than it can possibly be the
first time, except under peculiar circumstances. The sun had been set
for some time, when, being within a quarter of a mile of the ferryman's
hut, our path having led us close to the shore of the calm lake, we met
two neatly dressed women, without hats, who had probably been taking
their Sunday evening's walk. One of them said to us in a friendly, soft
tone of voice, 'What! you are stepping westward?' I cannot describe how
affecting this simple expression was in that remote place, with the
western sky in front, yet glowing with the departed sun. William wrote
the following poem long after, in remembrance of his feelings and mine:--

'What! you are stepping westward?' Yea,
'Twould be a wildish destiny
If we, who thus together roam
In a strange land, and far from home,
Were in this place the guests of chance:
Yet who would stop, or fear to advance,
Though home or shelter he had none,
With such a sky to lead him on?

The dewy ground was dark and cold,
Behind all gloomy to behold,
And stepping westward seem'd to be
A kind of heavenly destiny;
I liked the greeting, 'twas a sound
Of something without place or bound;
And seem'd to give me spiritual right
To travel through that region bright.

The voice was soft; and she who