52 A HUNDRED YEARS 



in time to gather some of the large heather sticks found 

 near such rough ground, and with my flint and tinder 

 box (for lucifers were a pleasure yet to come) I got up 

 a little fire for cooking and warming my wet feet before 

 I rolled my plaid about me as bed and bedding. That 

 reminds me that, often as I have slept on the hill sound 

 enough till cockcrow, I never saw anyone who could sleep 

 through the early morning chill, even though dry and 

 stuffed into a heap of dry heather. Uaimh Bhraodaig 

 was half-way up the eastern shoulder of Beinn an Eoin 

 (the Bird Mountain), and for, say, 500 yards all round 

 it was a heap of great stones left there by Noah, bad 

 enough to clamber over in daylight, but detestable in 

 the dark, and only to be endured in preference to a 

 long, cold, wet night on the open hill. I had roasted and 

 finished my much-admired grouse, and had, of course, 

 taken off my wet shoes — wet leather ensuring cold feet 

 all night, whereas even with wet stockings, if I stuffed 

 my feet into a bundle of dry heather they generally 

 got warm enough not to prevent sleep. I was just 

 dozing, lulled by the croaking of some ptarmigan (their 

 song sounds so different from that of the red grouse or 

 black game) as they flew from the hill-tops in the evening 

 to sup on the heather they can only get lower down. 

 A Yorkshire farmer who had been sent to our parts 

 used to insist that gravel must be their food, as nothing 

 else was within their reach on the hill-tops ! Suddenly 

 I heard a very different music from that of the ptarmigan, 

 evidently the voices of people, some of whom were so 

 out of temper that it was anything but psalmody which 

 in the dead calm night floated up some hundred yards 



