But the last refractory screw-nut is adjusted--Mercury has buckled on his wings; and yonder, two miles away, lies Inch Murren. Each winter, when the loch is frozen, the first person who crosses on foot to the island receives a pair of deer antlers as a trophy; and often, before the ice is very strong, the efforts of some bold skater to win the honours are exciting enough. Since the trophy was won this year,[C] however, thousands of pleasure-seekers have crossed the loch; venders of hot coffee and biscuits have established themselves on the shore of the island, under the ruined keep; and a rink of curlers has taken possession of the little bay. Where the deer came down to drink in summer, there mingles now the crackling roar of heavy stones hurled along the ice, with shrieks of vulgar laughter as some conspicuous skater comes to grief. The cries of the curlers themselves are loud and puzzling enough. At the near end of the rink the leader, a stout, grizzled countryman, shouts with many explanatory gestures to the player at the far end to “Tak’ a wick aff the fore stane, and lie in front to gaird.” The person addressed, evidently a clergyman (for on the ice social distinctions are forgotten), sends his cheese-shaped block of granite “birling” towards his instructor, and, as it comes along, the cries of the players stationed on either side of the rink with brushes to “soup her up,” and their vigorous efforts to smooth the path before it, are exciting as well as amusing, until the stone comes crashing in at last among the others round the mark. [C] 1882, I think. The “roaring game” is perhaps more interesting to the player than to the onlooker, but the enthusiasm it excites, and the exertion it requires, are exactly suited to the season, and prepare its votaries to enjoy most heartily the traditional “curler’s dinner” of corned beef and greens. One soon grows tired of the noise and stir around this oasis of the ice. Indeed, the laughter and the movement seem almost sacrilege in a place where so lately the autumn leaves dropped silently into the clear brown water below, where the plash of a trout made stillness felt, and the solitude was unbroken by the step of man. Away, then, from the coffee-stands and the curling-rink, from the shouting of the shinty-players, and the fragrance of intolerable cigarettes! The loch is frozen all the way to Luss; last night’s wind has swept every particle of snow from the surface; and to the little loch village, out of sight in the bay ahead, stretch seven miles of ice, smooth as black glass. [Illustration]