Noon
For in the grey smoke of mist those treacherous pools crept noiselessly to my feet , and once I had almost walked blindly into an ice-clear turgid little lake . My foot sank in the mire of it almost up to the knees ere I jumped to the nature of my neighbourhood , and with an effort little short of miraculous in the state of my body , threw myself back on the safe bank , clear of the death-trap . And again I sat on a hillock and surrendered to the most doleful meditations . Noon came and went , the rain passed and came again , and passed once more , and still I was guessing my way about the lochs , making no headway from their neighbourhood , and , to tell the truth , a little glad of the same , for they were all I knew of the landscape in Moor Rannoch , and something of friendship was in their treacherous presence , and to know they were still beside me , though it said little for my progress to Glenurchy , was an assurance that I was not making my position worse by going in the wrong airt . All about me , when the rain was gone for the last time , there was a cry of waters , the voices of the burns running into the lochans , tinkling , tinkling , tinkling merrily , and all out of key with a poor wretch in draggled tartans , fleeing he knew not whither , but going about in shortened circles like a hedgehog in the sea . The mist made no sign of lifting all this time , but shrouded the country as if it were come to stay for ever , and I was doomed to remain till the end , guessing my way to death in a silver-grey reek . I strained my ears , and far off to the right I heard the sound of cattle bellowing , the snorting low of a stirk upon the hillside when he wonders at the lost pastures of his calfhood in the merry summer before .