It made little matter to him that they were in the midst of a merry company, he could sun himself in the presence that was so much of his own creating all the same, and save that he was more silent than at other times, no one could have observed any departure from his usual bearing. Sophia was aware of his mute observance, and thought it 'very nice,' she was used to it, and it required from her no irksome effort in response, which, as her thinking part was neither imaginative nor emotional, and somewhat sluggish besides, was comfortable. The contrast between Roderick's quiet and the lively loquacity of Mr. Wallowby, told all in favour of the former; for although Mary and her mother with their greater readiness relieved her from the necessity of reply, it was mortifying thus to realize her own slowness, and she found the constant smiling and laughter over jests whose point she had missed, fatiguing to her facial muscles, and at last she took refuge in a private chat with Roderick as to whether he thought the day would keep fine and such like weighty matters. [Illustration: Loch Gorton and Inchbracken. Page 79.] They drove across the upland moors and the ridge dividing Glen Effick from the neighbouring valley of the Gorton, and down Gorton side to where it spreads into the lake of the same name. At that point it is crossed by a bridge, the road passing an old posting inn which looks down the loch, and is backed by Craig Findochart, the highest mountain of the district, and the goal of the day's expedition. Loch Gorton is a basin among the hills, deep and narrow at its upper end, but broadening and shallowing towards its base. It fills the mouth of a valley whose precipitous slopes crowd down upon the water at its head, but draw back in lessening and ever-widening undulations from the lower end. Near the outlet is the broad low island of Inchbracken, connected with the mainland by a narrow neck of land. Here in the old time stood the castle of the Drysdales, commanding the isthmus, which they cut across and commanded by a drawbridge. The moat is filled up now, and the square old keep, ivy-grown and ruinous, has sunk into a mere picturesque feature in the shrubbery of the modern mansion. Leaving their phaeton at the Bridge of Gorton Inn, the party secured a guide, and proceeded to ascend the hill. A steep footpath led across several enclosed fields, and brought them through a stretch of oak copsewood to a track of open pasture, whence they could look down on the lake spread out at their feet, while the great purple mountain reared its steep shoulders above them, swelling in broad sweeps of heath backward and upward to the beetling crags far up, thrusting their jagged outlines into the sky, and shutting out the climber from the distant summit. The belt of pasture past, climbing began in earnest. The shaggy heather was knee deep in many places, and every here and there the rocky knuckles of the mountain projected through the peaty soil.