r down its
terrible distance upon that nightmare of gulf and eminence, of gash, and
peaks afloat upon swirling mists. It lay, a looming terror, forgotten of
heaven and unfriendly to man (as one might readily imagine), haunted for
ever with wailing airs and rumours, ghosts calling in the deeps of dusk
and melancholy, legends of horror and remorse.

"Thank God," said I, as we gave the last look at it--"thank God I was
not born and bred yonder. Those hills would crush my heart against my
very ribs."

"It's good enough for the people who are in it," said John. "What are
they but MacDonalds? 'Take and not give' is their motto. They can have
Glencoe for me, with M'Millan's right to Knapdale,--as long as wave
beats on rock."

Master Gordon, though we had spoken in the Gaelic, half guessed our
meaning. "A black place and mournful," said he; "but there may be love
there too and warm hearts, and soil where the truth might flourish as in
the champaign over against Gilgal beside the plains of Moreh."

Now we were in a tract of country mournful beyond my poor description.
I know comes in Argile that whisper silken to the winds with juicy
grasses, corries where the deer love to prance deep in the cool dew, and
the beasts of far-off woods come in bands at their seasons and together
rejoice. I have seen the hunter in them and the shepherd too, coarse
men in life and occupation, come sudden among the blowing rush and
whispering reed, among the bog-flower and the cannoch, unheeding the
moor-hen and the cailzie-cock rising, or the stag of ten at pause, while
they stood, passionate adventurers in a rapture of the mind, held as it
were by the spirit of such places as they lay in a sloeberry bloom of
haze, the spirit of old good songs, the baffling surmise of the piper
and the bard. To those corries of my native place will be coming in the
yellow moon of brock and foumart--the beasts that dote on the autumn
eves--the People of Quietness; have I not seen their lanthoms and heard
their laughter in the night?--so that they must be blessed corries, so
endowed since the days when the gods dwelt in them without tartan and
spear in the years of the peace that had no beginning.

But the corries of Lorn; black night on them, and the rain rot!
They were swamps of despair as we went struggling through them. The
knife-keen rushes whipped us at the thigh, the waters bubbled in our
shoes. Round us rose the hills grey and bald, sown with boulders and