definitions, Dickson felt comforted. He paid his bill, took an
affectionate farewell of the landlord, and at 7.30 precisely stepped
out into the gleaming morning.

It was such a day as only a Scots April can show. The cobbled
streets of Kirkmichael still shone with the night's rain,
but the storm clouds had fled before a mild south wind, and the
whole circumference of the sky was a delicate translucent blue.
Homely breakfast smells came from the houses and delighted
Mr. McCunn's nostrils; a squalling child was a pleasant reminder
of an awakening world, the urban counterpart to the morning song
of birds; even the sanitary cart seemed a picturesque vehicle.
He bought his ration of buns and ginger biscuits at a baker's shop
whence various ragamuffin boys were preparing to distribute the
householders' bread, and took his way up the Gallows Hill to the
Burgh Muir almost with regret at leaving so pleasant a habitation.

A chronicle of ripe vintages must pass lightly over small beer.
I will not dwell on his leisurely progress in the bright weather,
or on his luncheon in a coppice of young firs, or on his thoughts
which had returned to the idyllic. I take up the narrative at about
three o'clock in the afternoon, when he is revealed seated on a milestone
examining his map. For he had come, all unwitting, to a turning of the
ways, and his choice is the cause of this veracious history.

The place was high up on a bare moor, which showed a white lodge
among pines, a white cottage in a green nook by a burnside, and no
other marks of human dwelling. To his left, which was the east,
the heather rose to a low ridge of hill, much scarred with peat-bogs,
behind which appeared the blue shoulder of a considerable mountain.