They run across the stone; they have nothing to do with the shape of it.

You see that?
Yes: but here are cracks running across them, all along the stone, till the turf hides them.
Look at them again; they are no cracks; they do not go into the stone.
I see.

They are scratched; something like those on the elder-stem at home, where the cats sharpen their claws.

But it would take a big cat to make them.
Do you recollect what I told you of Madam How's hand, more flexible than any hand of man, and yet strong enough to grind the mountains into paste?
I know.

Ice! ice! ice! But are these really ice-marks?
Child, on the place where we now stand, over rich lawns, and warm woods, and shining lochs, lay once on a time hundreds, it may be thousands, of feet of solid ice, crawling off yonder mountain-tops into the ocean there outside; and this is one of its tracks.