Dickson McCunn was never to forget the first stage in that pilgrimage.
A little after midday he descended from a grimy third-class carriage
at a little station whose name I have forgotten. In the village
nearby he purchased some new-baked buns and ginger biscuits, to which
he was partial, and followed by the shouts of urchins, who admired his
pack--"Look at the auld man gaun to the schule"--he emerged into
open country. The late April noon gleamed like a frosty morning,
but the air, though tonic, was kind. The road ran over sweeps of
moorland where curlews wailed, and into lowland pastures dotted with
very white, very vocal lambs. The young grass had the warm fragrance
of new milk. As he went he munched his buns, for he had resolved
to have no plethoric midday meal, and presently he found the burnside
nook of his fancy, and halted to smoke. On a patch of turf close
to a grey stone bridge he had out his Walton and read the chapter
on "The Chavender or Chub." The collocation of words delighted him
and inspired him to verse. "Lavender or Lub"--"Pavender or Pub"-
"Gravender or Grub"--but the monosyllables proved too vulgar for
poetry. Regretfully he desisted.

The rest of the road was as idyllic as the start. He would tramp
steadily for a mile or so and then saunter, leaning over bridges
to watch the trout in the pools, admiring from a dry-stone dyke the
unsteady gambols of new-born lambs, kicking up dust from strips of
moor-burn on the heather. Once by a fir-wood he was privileged to
surprise three lunatic hares waltzing. His cheeks glowed with the
sun; he moved in an atmosphere of pastoral, serene and contented.
When the shadows began to lengthen he arrived at the village of
Cloncae, where he proposed to lie. The inn looked dirty, but he
found a decent widow, above whose door ran the legend in home-made