The of flame lap up the last high frontiers of bracken 



Hill-Tarn. an( j climbing heather, and the ptarmigan would 

 know nothing of it, would not care. Their 

 grey home would be inviolate. No tempest 

 can drive them forth. Even the dense snows 

 of January do not starve them out. Do they 

 not mock them by then taking the whiteness 

 of the snow for their own ? They have nothing 

 to fear save the coming of a black frost so 

 prolonged and deathly that even the sun fire in 

 the eagle's blood grows chill, and the great 

 pinions dare no more face the icy polar breath. 

 'They'll be the last things alive when the 

 world is cold,' said an old gillie to me, speaking 

 of these storm -swept lichen -fed children of 

 the upper-wild. 



The same old gillie once saw a strange sight 

 at my mountain-tarn. He had when a youth 

 climbed Maoldhu to its summit in midwinter, 

 because of a challenge that he could not do 

 what no other had ever done at that season. 

 He started before dawn, but did not reach the 

 lochan till a red fire of sunset flared along the 

 crests. The tarn was frozen deep, and for all 

 the pale light that dwelled upon it was black 

 as basalt, for a noon -tempest had swept its 

 surface clear of snow. At first he thought 

 small motionless icebergs lay in it, but 

 wondered at their symmetrical circle. He 



54 



