Page:Poetical works of Mathilde Blind.djvu/55

 Rh hotel at Talladale, Loch Maree. And such a storm! Walking along the banks of the loch I saw what looked like some dark nebulous host rushing from the further end of the lake and advancing with a weird, booming sound which made the trees shiver through their branches, and their pale leaves fall to the earth. And then the tempest of rain, sleet, and hail burst right over my head. So heavily did it beat on the loch that the water splashed up as if stones were falling into it, and the surface where it hailed looked like one white seething mass several feet in height, not stationary, however, but travelling onwards with incredible rapidity. Now and then the lightning flashed through the gloom of cloud and forest, and the thunder was reverberated from a hundred peaks. Rainbows followed in the wake of the hurricane, and it was astonishing to see the hurrying storm now descending in the wake of the hurricane, while the barren mountain-side which had been invisible an instant before, was now clothed in most delicate hues, which, like gossamer wafted by an imperceptible breeze, hovered on from hill to hill. These strange appalling gusts were renewed many times during that and the following day, although with each fresh fit the storm seemed to lose somewhat of its first strength. At last, on the morning of the third day the sun shone forth, the vapours lolled languidly about Ben Slioch, whose peaks rose untrammelled above them, and I found it possible to be rowed to some of the small islands with which the centre of the loch is studded. One of them, called Eilean Raree, is thickly wooded, and covered with ferns and bushes of every description. Half hidden amid all this greenery are strange half-effaced crosses still dimly discernible here and there. Not far from this spot full of an indescribable pathos is a deep dark well where folk