Three Boys; Or, The Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai

by George Manville Fenn

Taking that direction, he pursued his level way over a shingly beach, with the impression upon him that he must be journeying along a deep glen with high rocks on either side, and one of the little lochs which he had often seen in these narrow straths, filling up the principal part of the hollow.

Once or twice he found his feet splashing in water, but by bearing to the left he found himself again on the dry pebbles, and in this way, save for a few heavy masses in his path, he skirted what he rightly concluded was a mountain loch, though whereabouts he could not tell.

Gaining a little courage as he realised all this, he ventured once upon a shout, in the hope that it might be heard, but he did not repeat it, for he stopped awe-stricken as his cry was repeated away to his left, then on his right, and again and again, to go murmuring off as if a host of the spirits of the air were mocking his peril.

But a little thought taught him that his surmise was right, and that he was slowly making his way along a narrow glen, whose towering walls had the property of reflecting back any sound; and, though he dared not raise his voice again, he picked up the first heavy stone against which he kicked, and hurled it from him with all his might.

A terribly dull, hollow, sullen plunge was the result, telling of the great depth of the water, and this sound was taken up, to go echoing and whispering away into the distance till it died out, and then seemed to begin again in a low, dull roar, which puzzled him as he listened.

Just then it seemed to him that a warm breath of air came upon his cheek, and this grew stronger, and the dull roar more plain. Then it did not seem so dark, and he realised that a breeze was coming softly up the glen, meeting him and wafting the wet mist away.

There was no doubt of this, and, though it was intensely dark where he stood, it was a transparent darkness, through which he could see the starry sky, forming as it were an arch of golden points starting on either side from great walls of rock a thousand feet above the level of the loch. This loch, in spite of the darkness, he could plainly see now, reflecting from its level surface, which stretched away into the darkness, the bright points of the light above.

Max stood thinking, and listened to the dull roar. He had been long enough in the Highlands now to know that this was not the continuation of the echoes he had raised, but the murmur of falling water, either of some mountain torrent pouring into the lake, or by a reverse process the lake emptying its superabundant water into the rocky bed of a stream, which would go bubbling and foaming down to the sea.

The wafting away of the mist seemed to relieve him of a good deal of the confusion, and, weary though he was, he found himself able to distinguish his way, and creep along the pebbly margin of the black loch, which lay so still and solemn beneath the starry sky.

All at once, after about an hour’s laborious tramp down the weird glen, with its wild crags, black as ink, towering up to right and left, he suddenly caught sight of a gleam of light, and it struck him that he had come near to the mouth of the glen, and that he could see a star low down on the horizon.