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 -saying. 

 After the farthest oaks on Sliabh Gorm, as 

 the ridge to the south-west is called and up 



5i 



