Indeed,
in every possible key, and with many cunning inflections, till I
began to wonder what was the use of such people as Mr. Arch, and to
sing the same air myself in a more diffident manner.
Tring was reached, and then Tring railway-station; for the two are
not very near, the good people of Tring having held the railway, of
old days, in extreme apprehension, lest some day it should break
loose in the town and work mischief. I had a last walk, among
russet beeches as usual, and the air filled, as usual, with the
carolling of larks; I heard shots fired in the distance, and saw,
as a new sign of the fulfilled autumn, two horsemen exercising a
pack of fox-hounds. And then the train came and carried me back to
London.
CHAPTER IV - A WINTER'S WALK IN CARRICK AND GALLOWAY - A FRAGMENT -
1876
At the famous bridge of Doon, Kyle, the central district of the
shire of Ayr, marches with Carrick, the most southerly. On the
Carrick side of the river rises a hill of somewhat gentle
conformation, cleft with shallow dells, and sown here and there
with farms and tufts of wood. Inland, it loses itself, joining, I
suppose, the great herd of similar hills that occupies the centre
of the Lowlands. Towards the sea it swells out the coast-line into
a protuberance, like a bay-window in a plan, and is fortified
against the surf behind bold crags. This hill is known as the
Brown Hill of Carrick, or, more shortly, Brown Carrick.
It had snowed overnight. The fields were all sheeted up; they were
tucked in among the snow, and their shape was modelled through the
pliant counterpane, like children tucked in by a fond mother. The
wind had made ripples and folds upon the surface, like what the
sea, in quiet weather, leaves upon the sand. There was a frosty
stifle in the air. An effusion of coppery light on the summit of
Brown Carrick showed where the sun was trying to look through; but
along the horizon clouds of cold fog had settled down, so that
there was no distinction of sky and sea. Over the white shoulders
of the headlands, or in the opening of bays, there was nothing but
a great vacancy and blackness; and the road as it drew near the
edge of the cliff seemed to skirt the shores of creation and void
space.
The snow crunched under foot, and at farms all the dogs broke out
barking as they smelt a passer-by upon the road. I met a fine old
fellow, who might have sat as the father in 'The Cottar's Saturday
Night,' and who swore most heathenishly at a cow he was driving.
And a little after I scraped acquaintance with a poor body tramping
out to gather cockles. His face was wrinkled by exposure; it was
broken up into flakes and channels, like mud beginning to dry, and
weathered in two colours, an incongruous pink and grey.
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