every minute I see the little mounds in their natural shapes that
have been mountains for a week. I see wet cottages on the other side
of the glen that I had forgotten. Then, as I walk on, I see out over
a cloud to the tops of real mountains standing up into the sky.

There is a dense white fog around the cottage, and we seem to be
shut away from any habitation. All round behind the hills there is a
moan and rumble of thunder coming nearer, at times with a fierce and
sudden crash. The bracken has a nearly painful green in the
strangeness of the light. Enormous sheep are passing in and out of
the sky line.

There is a strange depression about the cottage to-night. The woman
of the house is taken ill and has got into bed beside her
mother-in-law, who is over ninety, and is wandering in her mind. The
man of the house has gone away ten miles for medicine, and I am left
with the two children, who are playing silently about the door.

The larches in the haggard are dripping heavily with damp, and the
hens and geese, bewildered with the noise and gloom, are cackling
with uneasy dread. All one's senses are disturbed. As I walk
backwards and forwards, a few yards above and below the door, the
little stream I do not see seems to roar out of the cloud.

Every leaf and twig is heavy with drops, and a dog that has passed
with a sad-eyed herd looked wet and draggled and afraid.

I remember lying in the heather one clear Sunday morning in the
early autumn when the bracken had just turned. All the people of the
district were at Mass in a chapel a few miles away, so the valleys