t and if the hill-birds would cry there also.

"Well, it's no use you and me seeing which of us can gape the longest if
we mean to get to Glencorse before the light goes," said Ellen. "We'd
best step forward. I'm glad you like the place. I love it. And this bit
of the road's bonny. When Rachael Wing and I were stopping up in the
ploughman's cottage at Kirktown over by Glencorse Pond we got up one
day at sunrise and came over here before the stroke of four. And if
you'll believe it, the road was thick with rabbits, running about as
bold as brass and behaving as sensibly as Christians. The poor things
ran like the wind when they saw us. I wish we could have explained we
meant no harm, for I suppose it's the one time in the day when they
count on having the world to themselves."

"I've felt like that about a jaguar," he said. "Came on it suddenly, on
a clearing by a railway camp on the Leopoldina. It had been tidying up a
monkey and was going home a bit stupid and sleepy. Lord, the sick fright
in its eyes when it saw me. I'd have given anything to be able to stand
it a drink and offer to see it home."

"Och!" she murmured abashed. "Me talking about rabbits, and you
accustomed to jaguars. I suppose you never take notice of a rabbit
except to look down your nose at it. But we can't rise to jaguars in
Scotland. But I once saw a red deer running in the woods at Taynuilt."

"I've seen a red deer too," he said, "when I was motorcycling up to Ross
this summer." It flashed across his mind then as it had flashed across
the road then, and a thought came to him which he felt shy to speak, and
then said quickly and caught in his breath at the end, "The sunset was
on it. It looked the colour of your hair."

"Well, if it did," she cried with sudden petulance, "pity me, that has
to carry on a human head what looks natural on a wild beast's back. Och,
come along! Let's run. I like running. I'm cold. There's a bonny bridge
where the road dips, over the tail of Thriepmuir. Let's run." And for a
hundred yards or so she ran like the red deer by his side, and then
stopped for some reason that was not lack of breath. "I don't like
this," she said half laughingly. "I've a poor envious nature. I'm used
to running everybody else off their feet, and here you're holding back
to keep with me. I feel I'm being an object of condescension. We'll
walk, if you please."

Yaverland said, "Oh, what nonsense! I was just thinking how rippingly
you ran."