the noon of summer
Altogether , it was a bad time ; and Mick acted wisely in taking precautions against its recurrence , especially as the obstacles which had confronted him nearly two years back were now more hope-baffling than ever . For the intervening months had not brought the desirable `` thrifle more wit '' to his unsteady brother Thady , who , on the contrary , was developing into one of those people whose good-for-nothingness is taken as a matter of course even by themselves ; and a bolt was thus , so to speak , drawn across Mick 's locked door . He set off betimes on his long ramble . It was a cloudless July morning -- the noon of summer by air and light as well as by the calendar . Even the barest tracts of the bog-land , which vary their aspect as little as may be from shifting season to season , were flecked with golden furze-blossom , and whitened with streaming tufts of fairy-cotton , and sun-warmed herbs were fragrant underfoot . Mick rather hurried over this stage of his `` stravade , '' partly because he foresaw a blazing hot day , and he wished to be among more broken ground , where there are sheltered hollows scooped in the `` knockawns , '' and cool patches under their bushes and boulders . He entered the region of these things before his shadow had shrunk to its briefest ; for not so very far beyond Kilmacrone the smooth floor of the big bog crumples itself into crusts and ridges , as if it had caught the trick from its bounding ocean ; and the nearer it comes to the shore the higher it heaves itself , until at last it is cut short by a sheer cliff wall , with storm-stunted brambles and furzes cowering along the edge , fathoms above a base-line of exuberant weed and foam .