Page:Buchan - The Thirty-Nine Steps (Grosset Dunlap, 1915).djvu/102



SAT down on the very crest of the pass and took stock of my position.

Behind me was the road climbing through a long cleft in the hills which was the upper glen of some notable river. In front was a flat space of maybe a mile all pitted with bog-holes and rough with tussocks, and then beyond it the road fell steeply down another glen to a plain whose blue dimness melted into the distance.

To left and right were round-shouldered, green hills as smooth as pancakes, but to the south—that is the left hand—there was glimpse of high heathery mountains which I remembered from the map as the big knoll of hill which I had chosen for my sanctuary. I was on the central boss of a huge upland country, and could see everything moving for