THE TEMPERATURE 61 



heights around, that hill cannot be the 

 one up which you toiled, panting, for three 

 hours, in search of a royal red-deer, only 

 six months ago ? Why, it does not seem 

 much more than a mile from the valley to 

 the summit ! Surely, too, that depression 

 which you can just make out on the side 

 of the neighbouring hill cannot be the 

 corry by the sides of which one stood in 

 the drive of the mountain hares ? Then it 

 was two miles up : now it looks almost 

 within a cleek-shot ! So it is with the loch. 

 Dried up by the frost are all the innumer- 

 able rills which in summer made tinkling 

 music, as if of fairy bells, in the tenuous, 

 trembling air ; and the loch is low, lower 

 even than it normally is in July, and 

 almost perceptibly narrower ; one cannot 

 speak of its length, for both to the east 

 and to the west it winds far out of sight. 

 The few streams which survive the grip 

 of winter are diminished to an even 

 greater proportion. 



The one in which I had hoped to find 

 the first trout of the year was invisible 



