One night, during this second visit of mine to the hotel, the
mood to ramble came upon me, and, unable to resist the seductive
thought of a midnight stroll across the bracken-covered hills, I
borrowed a latchkey, and, armed with a flask of whisky and a thick
stick, plunged into the moonlit night. The keen, heather-scented air
acted like a tonic--I felt younger and stronger than I had felt for
years, and I congratulated myself that my friends would hardly know me
if they saw me now, as I swung along with the resuscitated stride of
twenty years ago. The landscape for miles around stood out with
startling clearness in the moonshine, and I stopped every now and then
to drink in the beauties of the glittering mountain-ranges and silent,
glimmering tarns. Not a soul was about, and I found myself, as I loved
to be, the only human element in the midst of nature. Every now and
then a dark patch fluttered across the shining road, and with a weird
and plaintive cry, a night bird dashed abruptly from hedge to hedge,
and seemingly melted into nothingness. I quitted the main road on the
brow of a low hill, and embarked upon a wild expanse of moor, lavishly
covered with bracken and white heather, intermingled with which were
the silvery surfaces of many a pool of water. For some seconds I stood
still, lost in contemplating the scenery,--its utter abandonment and
grand sense of isolation; and inhaling at the same time long and deep
draughts of the delicious moorland air, unmistakably impregnated now
with breaths of ozone.
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