midday
Old simple pleasures seemed for the moment dear . There was a zest for toils and discomforts , a tolerance of failure , which had been aforetime his chief traveller 's heritage . And then as he came to the ridge where the road passes from Glenavelin to Glen Adler , he stopped as in duty bound to look at the famous prospect . 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 .