the sun dropped below the western rim of hills. It was
necessary to make the most of the lingering light, if I did
not wish to be benighted in the woods. The little village of
Canterbury, which was the goal of my day's march, must lie
about to the north just beyond the edge of the mountain, and
in that direction I turned, pushing forward as rapidly as
possible through the undergrowth.

Presently I came into a region where the trees were larger
and the travelling was easier. It was not a primeval forest,
but a second growth of chestnuts and poplars and maples.
Through the woods there ran at intervals long lines of broken
rock, covered with moss--the ruins, evidently, of ancient
stone fences. The land must have been, in former days, a
farm, inhabited, cultivated, the home of human
hopes and desires and labours, but now relapsed into solitude
and wilderness. What could the life have been among these
rugged and inhospitable Highlands, on this niggard and
reluctant soil? Where was the house that once sheltered the
tillers of this rude corner of the earth?

Here, perhaps, in the little clearing into which I now
emerged. A couple of decrepit apple-trees grew on the edge of
it, and dropped their scanty and gnarled fruit to feast the
squirrels. A little farther on, a straggling clump of ancient
lilacs, a bewildered old bush of sweetbrier, the dark-green
leaves of a cluster of tiger-lilies, long past blooming,
marked the grave of the garden. And here, above this square
hollow in the earth, with the remains of a crumbling chimney
standing sentinel beside it, here the house must have stood.