It was about midnight when they left home, and as they did not wish to
arrive at the village to which they were bound, until the morning should
be rather advanced, the journey was as slowly performed as possible.
Every remarkable object on the way was noticed, and its history, if
any particular association was connected with it, minutely detailed,
whenever it happened to be known. When the sun rose, many beautiful
green spots and hawthorn valleys excited, even from these unpolished and
illiterate peasants, warm bursts of admiration at their fragrance and
beauty. In some places, the dark flowery heath clothed the mountains
to the tops, from which the gray mists, lit by a flood of light, and
breaking into masses before the morning breeze, began to descend into
the valleys beneath them; whilst the voice of the grouse, the bleating
of sheep and lambs, the pee-weet of the wheeling lap-wing, and the
song of the lark threw life and animation the previous stillness of the
country, sometimes a shallow river would cross the road winding off into
a valley that was overhung, on one side, by rugged precipices clothed
with luxurious heath and wild ash; whilst on the other it was skirted
by a long sweep of greensward, skimmed by the twittering swallow, over
which lay scattered numbers of sheep, cows, brood mares, and colts--many
of them rising and stretching themselves ere they resumed their pasture,
leaving the spots on which they lay of a deeper green. Occasionally,
too, a sly-looking fox might be seen lurking about a solitary lamb, or
brushing over the hills with a fat goose upon his back, retreating
to his den among the inaccessible rocks, after having plundered some
unsuspecting farmer.

As they advanced into the skirts of the cultivated country, they met
many other beautiful spots of scenery among the upland, considerable
portions of which, particularly in long sloping valleys, that faced the