midday
Once upon a time , says the tale , there was a Great Godly Man , a shepherd to trade , who lived in a cottage among heather . If you looked east in the morning , you saw miles of moor running wide to the flames of sunrise , and if you turned your eyes west in the evening , you saw a great confusion of dim peaks with the dying eye of the sun set in a crevice . If you looked north , too , in the afternoon , when the life of the day is near its end and the world grows wise , you might have seen a country of low hills and haughlands with many waters running sweet among meadows . But if you looked south in the dusty forenoon or at hot midday , you saw the far-off glimmer of a white road , the roofs of the ugly little clachan of Kilmaclavers , and the rigging of the fine new kirk of Threepdaidle . It was a Sabbath afternoon in the hot weather , and the man had been to kirk all the morning . He had heard a grand sermon from the minister -LRB- or it may have been the priest , for I am not sure of the date and the King told the story quickly -RRB- -- a fine discourse with fifteen heads and three parentheses . He held all the parentheses and fourteen of the heads in his memory , but he had forgotten the fifteenth ; so for the purpose of recollecting it , and also for the sake of a walk , he went forth in the afternoon into the open heather .