When he was left by his companion, Eddy went up by himself upon the moors, which was a kind of excursion he did not usually enjoy. He went up breasting the hill like a deer or a mountaineer, nor caring where he went, through ling and bracken, among the prickly whins, and over the treacherous quagmires of moss and bog. Something was in his mind which made him indifferent to all the accidents of the way. When he had reached the very top of the ridge he threw himself down upon the dark heather with his face upon the ground, falling as if he had been shot, and lay there for a few moments motionless as if he had died. Nature accommodates herself very easily to any vagary of rest. The dark figure seemed for a moment to disturb and break the line of vegetation, but had not been there a moment before the grasses and the ling seemed to take a new beginning, starting up from under him, the long myrtles rustling their heads, the Grass of Parnassus waving its white stars. So they would have done had he been dead, covering him over, hiding him in the bosom of the soil. He lay for a little while thus, harmonised and composed into quiet under the still touch of the hill, so that when he got up again he seemed to leave a broad and angry void where he had been. What passed in his mind while he buried his face in the coolness of the earth, and hid himself from the eye of day, it would be hard to tell--perhaps only the working of his quick brain as to what he could do in the emergency in which he found himself, perhaps compunction, miserable thoughts of the past, more miserable reflections on the future. But nothing of this was visible when he raised himself from that momentary collapse. He sat down upon the heather with his face towards the lake, and pondered, clutching at his hair with both his hands, setting his elbows on his knees. What was it he was thinking of out there upon the lonely moor, not a living creature near him except the wild creatures on the hills, the insects in the moorland vegetation. His short-sighted eyes roamed vaguely over the heather, pausing upon here and there a gleam of water in a hollow, turning instinctively, like a child toward a light, to the deep loch lying far below. But he saw little or nothing with these wandering eyes. They were bent upon visionary objects, seeing scenes and visions which had nothing to do with the moor or the loch of Rosmore.