AMONGST THE HEATHER. 47 



invaded, now screaming and rushing by in terror lest the 

 traveller should pursue his investigations among the stones. 

 Having escaped from these furies, a sandpiper proceeds to 

 follow their example with still more emphatic flying and 

 screaming. She must be deeply outraged, as she flies back- 

 wards and forwards, almost brushing against the heartless 

 intruder amongst her domestic sanctities. If he possesses any 

 kindliness of nature, he retires quickly from the angry matron, 

 and devotes himself to the flowers which edge the little burn. 

 They form the only cheerful gleams in the landscape ; eye- 

 bright, milk-worts, white and blue ; butterworts, like tall 

 violets, with curious, greasy leaves ; foxgloves, marsh bed- 

 straw, sundew, and, once more queen of every mound, the 

 Erica tetralix. The mere enumeration of them transports 

 us to the brook-side and its sighing, fluttering cotton-grasses, 

 always the symbols of desolation. No sign of man can be 

 seen. The mists float together, and merge their soft outlines 

 in grey cloud ; the air grows damp and damper ; and now a 

 drizzle sets in, and the swelling moorland is swathed in folds 

 of storm-clouds. Then the drizzle gives way to steady rain 

 that soon passes into drifted sheets, as the wind eddies down 

 the southern valleys. 



Wrapped in our macintosh, it is high time to struggle back 

 towards Pitlochrie. Luckily we possess a flask filled with 

 dews even more potent than those the skies are distilling over 

 our devoted heads (for Pitlochrie boasts an admirable whisky), 

 and at length a huge figure descending the brae at our side, 

 like the Spectre of the Brocken, joins us, and turns out to be a 

 shepherd, contentedly smoking his pipe, itself made out of the 

 bruyerc or heather of Southern France, though commerce con- 

 tracts it into " briar " wood. If heather ministers to dreariness 

 and solitude, it also affords its own solace to some enviable 

 dispositions. 



" Saft the day ! " he says, in answer to our greeting. " Ou 



