like lying, actually congratulated himself that he had got through
without telling a downright falsehood. It would not have bettered
matters in the least had he disclosed to her the good advice Kirsty
gave him: she would only have been furious at the impudence of the
hussey in talking so to _her_ son.




CHAPTER III

AT THE FOOT OF THE HORN


The region was like a waste place in the troubled land of dreams--a
spot so waste that the dreamer struggles to rouse himself from his
dream, finding it too dreary to dream on. I have heard it likened to
'the ill place, wi' the fire oot;' but it did not so impress me when
first, after long desire, I saw it. There was nothing to suggest the
silence of once roaring flame, no half-molten rocks, no huge,
honey-combed scoriae, no depths within depths glooming mystery and
ancient horror. It was the more desolate that it moved no active sense
of dismay. What I saw was a wide stretch of damp-looking level, mostly
of undetermined or of low-toned colour, with here and there a black
spot, or, on the margin, the brighter green of a patch of some growing
crop. Flat and wide, the eye found it difficult to rest upon it and not
sweep hurriedly from border to border for lack of self-asserted object
on which to alight. It looked low, but indeed lay high; the bases of
the hills surrounding it were far above the sea. These hills, at this
season a ring of dull-brown high-heaved hummocks, appeared to make of