To Mountain Tarn 



Anglers go up there. Not of the scant natives 

 at least not often, save to guide the curious 

 stranger by the elusive way through the peat 

 hags. They who go lunch in solitude, to the 

 croak of the passing raven. The environment 

 is impressive ; to the susceptible, overpowering. 

 It is cumulative. At first more easily resisted, it 

 settles down. Lightest in the morning, it gathers 

 as the sun passes the meridian, and the shadows 

 incline to the east. With some, a very little is 

 enough. A morning hour, to say they have been 

 there, and a wide margin of the day, to make sure 

 they will get back. For the hardiest, the fall of 

 evening and the thought of the peat hags, tricky 

 enough in the sunlight, quicken the preparations 

 for departure. 



There are, on whom it has a fascination. As 

 certain voices in a room awaken sympathetic 

 chords in a piano, so certain temperaments touch 

 the finer chords of a scene ; even such a scene as 

 this. We are not all tuned alike. I remember 

 one, who came from beyond the Tweed though 

 Loch Skene is really south of the infant Tweed. 

 He was drawn by the spell, held in the glamour. 

 He fished all day. Sad, or rather wistful, St. 

 Mary's was hard by, within easy reach. Douglas 

 burn, of border and ballad fame, ran but a little 

 way off. Most seductive of all, redolent of story 

 and swarming with trout, Yarrow watered its 

 dowie holmes. 



s 257 



