"I am sure Dr. Sutherland can tell us." she says, timidly; and she does not meet his eyes.
"It is one of the crane's-bills, any way," he says, indifferently. "Don't you think you had better return now, Miss Avon, or you will hurt your foot?"
"Oh, my foot is quite well now, thank you!" she says; and on she goes again.
We pass by the first cuttings of the slate-quarries; the men suspended by ropes round their waists and hewing away at the face of the cliff. We go through the long straggling village; and the Laird remarks that it is not usual for a Celtic race to have such clean cottages, with pots of flowers in the window. We saunter idly onwards, towards those great mountain-masses, and there is apparently no thought of returning.
"When we've gone so far, might we not go on to the mouth of the pass?" she asks. "I should like to have a look even at the beginning of Glencoe."
"I thought so," said the Laird, with a shrewd smile. "Oh, ay! we may as well go on."
Past those straggling cottages, with the elder-bush at their doors to frighten away witches; over the bridge that spans the brawling Cona; along the valley down which the stream rushes; and this gloom overhead deepens and deepens. The first of the great mountains appears on our right, green to the summit, and yet so sheer from top to bottom that it is difficult to understand how those dots of sheep maintain their footing. Then the marks on him; he seems to be a huge Behemoth, with great eyes, grand, complacent, even sardonic in his look. But the further and further mountains have nothing of this mild, grand humour about them; they are sullen and awful; they grasp the earth with their mighty bulk below, but far away they lift their lurid peaks to the threatening skies, up there where the thunder threatens to shake the silence of the world.
"Miss Avon," Dr. Sutherland again remonstrates, "you have come five or six miles now. Suppose you have to walk back in the rain?"
"I don't mind about that," she says, cheerfully. "But I am dreadfully, dreadfully hungry."
"Then we must push on to Clachaig," says the Laird; "there is no help for it."