The second day’s walk proved even more enjoyable than the first had done, except that there was no kindly old minister to provide a midday meal. But the sense of freedom, the bracing air, and the loveliness of the road beside the river Spey, with glimpses every now and then of the Cairn Gorm range, were things to be remembered through a lifetime. With Aviemore specially, he was delighted. He began to weave plans for the future, and to dream of wandering with Evereld among those exquisite hills with their craggy rocks cropping out here and there from between dark pines and delicately fresh birches, while beyond there stretched great pine woods, and mountains whose summits were still white with snow. Kingussie furnished him with bread and with a somewhat draughty sleeping apartment in the ruined castle which goes by the name of the Ruthven Barracks; but the night air was keen, and many a time he longed for the warmth and comfort of the hay-cart. There was something dreary, too, in the desolate shell of the old residence of the Comyns, and he awoke with a feeling of depression which was curiously foreign to him. The morning was cloudy, and the waters of the Spey felt icy cold as he plunged into them; however, the walk through Glen Tromie which the old minister had specially recommended to him soon made him warm enough, and the wild beauty of Loch Seilich, and its surrounding precipices fully justified the praises which his guide had bestowed on them. He rested for some little while by the loch, ate his last crust, and counted over, as a miser counts his gold, the three pence which must somehow carry him to Glasgow. “I must certainly eat less,” he reflected, ruefully, having only dared the previous night to buy a pennyworth of bread. “The worst of it is this mountain air makes one so confoundedly hungry. I shall soon be reduced to eating birds’ eggs, or to singing in front of village alehouses in the hope of earning money.” His reverie was interrupted by the falling of some heavy drops of rain; he set out once more on his walk seeing plainly enough from the threatening sky that a storm was at hand. It came indeed with a speed which surprised him. Clouds, which blotted out the landscape, hemmed him in; the rising wind roared through the wilds of Gaick, and the rain came down in sheets, blinding and drenching him, for no mackintosh yet invented could have stood the pitiless deluge which showed no sign of abating, but rather increased in violence. Worst of all, he missed his path so that there was not even the comfort of knowing that every step was bringing him nearer his destination. On the contrary, he began to fear that he had altogether lost himself.