SPY ROCK

I

It must have been near Sutherland's Pond that I lost the way.
For there the deserted road which I had been following through
the Highlands ran out upon a meadow all abloom with purple
loose-strife and golden Saint-John's wort. The declining sun
cast a glory over the lonely field, and far in the corner,
nigh to the woods, there was a touch of the celestial colour:
blue of the sky seen between white clouds: blue of the sea
shimmering through faint drifts of silver mist. The hope of
finding that hue of distance and mystery embodied in a living
form, the old hope of discovering the Blue Flower rose again
in my heart. But it was only for a moment, for when I came
nearer I saw that the colour which had caught my eye came from
a multitude of closed gentians--the blossoms which never open
into perfection--growing so closely together that their
blended promise had seemed like a single flower.

So I harked back again, slanting across the meadow, to
find the road. But it had vanished. Wandering among the
alders and clumps of gray birches, here and there I found a
track that looked like it; but as I tried each one, it grew
more faint and uncertain and at last came to nothing in a
thicket or a marsh. While I was thus beating about the bush