though sometimes the flush of the afterglow The 

 descends as on soft impalpable wings from the Hill-Tarn, 

 zenith. At dawn, in midsummer, long scarlet 

 lines will drift from its midmost to the south 

 and west, like blood-stained shafts and battle- 

 spears of a defeated aerial host. 



Few sounds are heard by that mountain- 

 tarn. The travelling cloud lets fall no echo 

 of its fierce frost-crashing shards. Dawn and 

 noon and dusk are quiet-footed as mist. The 

 stars march in silence. The springing Northern 

 Lights dance in swift fantastic flame, but are 

 voiceless as the leaping shadows in a wood. 

 Only those other wayfarers of the mountain- 

 summit, tempest, thunder, the streaming wind, 

 the snow coming with muffled rush out of the 

 north, wild rains and whirling sleet, the sharp 

 crackling tread of the hosts of frost : only 

 these break the silence ; or, at times, the cries 

 of 'the eldest children of the hill' as the 

 mountain- Gael calls the eagle, the hill-fox, and 

 the ptarmigan the only creatures that have 

 their home above the reach of the heather and 

 in the grey stony wildernesses where only the 

 speckled moss and the lichen thrive. 



When I was last at this desolate and remote 

 tarn I realised the truth of that hill -say ing. 

 After the farthest oaks on Sliabh Gorm, as 

 the ridge to the south-west is called and up 



