ia8 THE A u L D 



them all the incomparable heather 

 only excepted is the wild thyme which 

 crowns each lichened boulder that lies 

 half buried in the mountain turf. Here 

 it cushions the dry, sandy ant-heaps 

 with its lilac clusters, there it shares 

 with yarrow the fringe of the barren 

 track, its elegant blossoms set in a dainty 

 spreading fabric of bay-green leaves. 

 And from the days when the sand-mar- 

 tins return to their burrows in the earthy 

 sides of the crumbling scaurs, until the 

 bog asphodel fires the September marsh, 

 the wild thyme with its aromatic frag- 

 rance ever accompanies that succession 

 of beautiful flowers which marks the 

 progress of the moorland summer. 



About midway between the spot 

 where the road emerges from the wood- 

 ed hillside of the sultry valley, up which 

 it has wandered like a weary traveller, 

 and the far-distant moor, where it ter- 

 minates in a number of sheep tracks, that 



