It was the same jolly, clear spring weather, and I simply could not contrive to

feel careworn. Indeed I was in better spirits than I had been for months. Over a

long ridge of moorland I took my road, skirting the side of a high hill which

the herd had called Cairnsmore of Fleet.

 

Nesting curlews and plovers were crying everywhere, and the links of green

pasture by the streams were dotted with young lambs. All the slackness of the

past months was slipping from my bones, and I stepped out like a four-year-old.

By-and-by I came to a swell of moorland which dipped to the vale of a little

river, and a mile away in the heather I saw the smoke of a train.

 

The station, when I reached it, proved to be ideal for my purpose. The moor

surged up around it and left room only for the single line, the slender siding,

a waiting-room, an office, the station-master’s cottage, and a tiny yard of

gooseberries and sweet-william. There seemed no road to it from anywhere, and to

increase the desolation the waves of a tarn lapped on their grey granite beach

half a mile away. I waited in the deep heather till I saw the smoke of an

east-going train on the horizon. Then I approached the tiny booking-office and

took a ticket for Dumfries.

 

The only occupants of the carriage were an old shepherd and his dog—a wall-eyed

brute that I mistrusted. The man was asleep, and on the cushions beside him was

that morning’s _Scotsman_. Eagerly I seized on it, for I fancied it would tell

me something.