78 Summer 



of the great Ben that rises from its shores, and whose 

 monstrous side shows scarce a vein of white in fine 

 weather ; were he to look on the distant mountains 

 streaked and scarred with lines of foam, and could he 

 be got to realise from the look of the swollen burns 

 hard by what it all signifies, he would be as himself 

 might put it ' pretty tolerably flummoxed.' It is 

 worth a man's while to walk in a rainstorm from the 

 Clachan of Aberfoyle to the Trossachs merely to see 

 the fury of the streams near by and the beauty of 

 those afar. But the privilege is one for the few. 



At this time sporadic tourists will always be coach- 

 ing it from place to place ; but none lingers as he 

 goes, firstly because there is no sport, and secondly 

 because the wet hills are past climbing, and even the 

 pleasant bridlepaths impassable. Only he that loves 

 the heights without heather he that delights in the 

 fresh hues of early summer and is not dismayed by 

 bad cookery nor afraid of damp will ' taste ' the June 

 Highlands as he ought. 



Ill 



THERE are two places where I love to sit and moral- 

 ise on human life. One is the corner of an ancient 

 and crowded village graveyard that might have 

 suggested the Elegy to Gray, the other a boulder amid 

 the bracken of a hillside. That among the tombs is 

 of the two the more cheerful resting-place, although 

 it has not yet become like a town cemetery, whither 



