Ben Wyvis, with its massive bulk, is in evidence everywhere here. It is
about the third highest mountain in this land of mountain and flood, and
there seems no getting rid of the giant Ben. It does not look so high as
it is because it is nowhere peaked or coned like Ben Ledi, for instance.
Away they moved early one lovely, hard frosty morning, with the Ben to
the left, sometimes seen, sometimes hidden by the dense woods they
penetrated, past the romantic Falls of Rogie, and westward and north
away.
Antony was a little anxious, however, about the weather. The wind was
down. Hardly a breath moved the twigs. But strange banks of rock-like
clouds began slowly to arise in the west. Like ships becalmed at sea,
they were waiting for the wind. Even a little breeze would have sufficed
to have carried them upwards and over the sky, obliterating the blue and
bringing night and darkness on a full hour before its time. But that
breeze came not for the time being; and as they champed their bits and
jingled their harness--sweetest music to a gipsy's ear--the very horses
seemed glad of the respite. But the country soon became lonesome in the
extreme, and its aspect one of threatening dreariness. Never a soul did
they meet on the road except one Highland shepherd with his dog and a
few half-wild sheep. Antony pulled up his cavalcade to question this
wiry old fellow, whose plaid was right over his head.
'What think you of the weather, my friend?'
And here is Donald's reply: 'Oh loshins! my good people, if it's going
far you are, whip up your fine horses and make the quick and proper
haste. For sure enough the snow will soon be down on you even more also.
Get into shelter soon.'
'Much of a fall, think you, Donald?'
'Och, it may not be so much of a fall, my dear laddie, but it's the wild
wind that will be roaring. The blizzard, the blizzard; and if it's only
bits of English bodies you are, it will snow you up and smother ye!'
And so Donald went on with his shivering sheep and his hardy dog. It was
but poor heartening he had left behind him. But there would be no going
back.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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