At last he and his guard, his mules and
muleteers, turned aside into a skirting way that would bring him to a
town visible at no great distance. Left alone, Ian viewed from a
hilltop the roofs of this place, with a tower or two starting up like
warning fingers. But his road led on through a mountain pass.
The earth itself seemed to be climbing. The mountain shapes, little
and big, gathered in herds. Cliffs, ravines, the hoarse song of water,
the faces of few human folk, and on these written "Mountains,
mountains! Live as we can! Catch who catch can!" After a time the road
was deprived of even these faces. The Scot thought of home mountains.
He thought of the Highlands. Above him and at some distance to the
right appeared a distribution of cliffs that reminded him of that
hiding-place after Culloden. He looked to see the birchwood, the
wheeling eagle. The sun was at noon. Riding in a solitude, he almost
dozed in the warm light. The Highlands and the eagle wheeling above
the crag.... Black Hill and Glenfernie and White Farm and
Alexander.... Life generally, and all the funny little figures running
full tilt, one against another....
His horse sprang violently aside, then stood trembling. Forms, some
ragged, some attired with a violent picturesqueness, had started from
without a fissure in the wood and from behind a huge wayside rock.
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