JULY 187 



incidents involving excruciating torment without any 

 apparent object. Last Whitsuntide (1905) I was riding 

 through a Highland deer-forest on one of those days 

 whose exceeding glory almost surpasses our capacity of 

 enjoyment, and infuses into our meditations a strain of 

 such melancholy as once found expression by a seven- 

 teenth-century poet. 



' Sweet day ! so cool, so calm, so bright ; 



The bridal of the earth and sky ; 

 Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night, 

 For thou must die ! ' 



For miles around the broad, brown moors lay open to 

 the sun, swept by shadow-belts cast from fleeting clouds. 

 Ben Nevis still held a great snowfield aloft upon his 

 crouched back; the lowlier summits were still seamed 

 and flecked with drifts the litter of a bygone winter; 

 but on lower levels, all was busy, riotous summer the 

 true ' sweet o' the year.' Towards evening, as we rode, a 

 pretty object appeared above the path, in vivid contrast 

 to the treeless waste. The sides of a little glen rose so 

 steeply as to have allowed a few rowans and birches to 

 root themselves among the rocks, and to flourish secure 

 from browsing deer. The rowans held up their flat white 

 saucers of bloom amid the fresh verdure; the birches 

 waved their airy plumes in the breeze ; ferns and shade- 

 loving herbage thickly clothed the ground below. It 

 was a charming little oasis in the waste of heath and 

 rock, yet it had been the scene of a gruesome tragedy 

 not many months before. Suspended by the antlers 

 from a forked rowan-tree were the remains of what had 

 once been a noble stag. Eagles and ravens had played 

 havoc with the carcass: the hide fluttered in tatters 



