100 WESTLAND MAY 



field which, for a week past, has been rattling at our 

 casements, fell to rest last night; and the mercury fell 

 also to ten degrees Fahrenheit. TAventy-two degrees 

 of frost on the twenty-second day of May ! The ruin 

 has been heartrending ; even hardy beech and hawthorn 

 have been seared as by a flame. 



XLII 



There is not much temptation to go out among this 

 wreck of fair things ; but the Whitsun short holidays 



westiand en( ^ to-morrow, and no precious fragment 

 "ay of them must be squandered within houses 

 built with hands. This is only make-believe winter 

 after all ; there must be places where the cold cannot 

 come. Clearly, the best of these will be one of those 

 narrow, deep glens they would be called combes in 

 the south country which seam the coast of Galloway 

 throughout its many windings. There is one such glen 

 close at hand Physgil Glen, they call it; what wind 

 there is blows off the land ; so there, if anywhere, may 

 foretaste of summer be had. 



The glen is thickly wooded with ash, it is true, so 

 there is no leaf-canopy now; but beneath the grey 

 stems the steep banks and the level spots beside 

 the burn are covered with a dense tapestry of wood- 

 hyacinths. Do not call them bluebells, dear Miss 

 Sassenach ! Our country-people call them, unmusically, 

 ' craw-taes ' ; but, as all the world ought to know, 

 though it does not, the ' bluebells of Scotland ' are not 

 these, but the summer flowers which you choose to call 



