The sides of the hills came close together, grew fearfully steep.
Crags appeared, and fern-crowded fissures and roots of trees like
knots of frozen serpents. The glen narrowed and deepened; the water
sang with a loud, rough voice.
Alexander loved this place. He had known it in childhood, often
straying this way with the laird, or with Sandy the shepherd, or Davie
from the house. When he was older he began to come alone. Soon he came
often alone, learned every stick and stone and contour, effect of
light and streak of gloom. As idle or as purposeful as the wind, he
knew the glen from top to bottom. He knew the voice of the stream and
the straining clutch of the roots over the broken crag. He had lain on
all the beds of leaf and moss, and talked with every creeping or
flying or running thing. Sometimes he read a book here, sometimes he
pictured the world, or built fantastic stages, and among fantastic
others acted himself a fantastic part. Sometimes with a blind turning
within he looked for himself. He had his own thoughts of God here, of
God and the Kirk and the devil. Often, too, he neither read, dreamed,
nor thought. He might lie an hour, still, passive, receptive. The
trees and the clouds, crag life, bird life, and flower life, life of
water, earth, and air, came inside. He was so used to his own silence
in the glen that when he walked through it with others he kept it
still.
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