You stand at the shedding of two streams; behind, the green and woodland spaces of the pastoral Avelin; at the feet, a land of stones and dwarf junipers and naked rifts in the hills, with white-falling waters and dark shadows even at midday.

And then, beyond and afar, the lines of hill-land crowd upon each other till the eye is lost in a mystery of grey rock and brown heather and single bald peaks rising sentinel-like in the waste.

The grey heavens lent a chill eeriness to the dim grey distances; the sharp winds, the forerunners of snow, blew over the moors like blasts from a primeval night.
By an odd vagary of temper the love of these bleak hills blazed up fiercely in his heart.

Never before had he felt so keenly the nameless glamour of his own heritage.

He had not been back six months and yet he had come to accept all things as matters of course, the beauty of the place, its sport, its memories.