If the mountains held that belief, it was _they_, not the dalesmen, who were the innocents, for the little path has been found passable at every season of the year; and Mr. G. D. Abraham, himself a distinguished climber, and a native of the district, was so willing to reveal the mountain mysteries as to plead in his book on _Motor Ways in Lakeland_ for the construction of a highroad from the very point where all farther access used to be barred. “The quaint little old-world hamlet,” he said, “will doubtless recover its glory of former days when the highway over Sty Head Pass becomes an accomplished fact.” The love of mountains, itself a growth of modern times, has in fact brought with it a peril which did not exist before; it has opened the gateway and pointed the path to the shrine; but where the worshipper enters, what if the destroyer enters too? What if the pilgrim is close followed by the prospector? Some years ago Mr. C. P. Trevelyan, M.P., introduced an “Access to Mountains Bill,” which while safeguarding the interests of land-owners, would have permitted pedestrians to indulge their love of highland scenery by making their way to the summits of uncultivated mountain or moorland. All nature-lovers must desire that such a measure may become law; and it might be hoped that landlords themselves would not persist in opposing it, for consideration should show them that it is impossible permanently to exclude the people from the hilltops of their native land. Even now, since it is the difficult and the forbidden which attract, there is a certain relish in the attempted ascent of those heights which in the landlord’s sense (not the climber’s) are still “inaccessible”--just as the cragsmen find a pleasure in striving to surmount the obstacles of rock-face or gully. Who has not longed to cross the lofty frontier into some deer-stalking or grouse-shooting Thibet, where, beyond the familiar lying sign-post stating that “trespassers will be prosecuted,” all is vagueness and mystery? What mountain-lover has not at times sought to snatch an “access to mountains” where access was denied? I still recall the zest of a raid, albeit unsuccessful, on one of the summits of the Grampians, when our small party of climbers, starting from Aviemore, and passing the heathery shores of Loch-an-Eilan, fell in near “the Argyle Stone” with a number of deer-stalkers, who groaned aloud in their fury when they heard by what route we had ascended, and insisted on our going down to Kincraig. We had spoiled their day’s sport, they told us; and we, while regretting to have done so, could not refrain from saying that they had equally spoiled ours. We were consoled, however, in some measure, during that inglorious descent, by the sight of an osprey, or fishing-eagle, hovering over the river Spey: doubtless the bird was one of a pair that for years haunted Loch-an-Eilan, until the cursed cupidity of egg-collectors drove them from almost their last breeding-place.