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49 CHAPTER III

THE HARE AND THE LAWYERS

the middle of August the daylight in the North of Scotland is sadly curtailed. The day seems only half spent when a certain stillness falls upon the landscape. In the near foreground a sudden glow of crimson light fires the hayfields into a ruddy blaze. The distant hills exchange the varied colours of the afternoon for a soft and delicate tone of iron grey. As I pen my thoughts in a beautiful Perthshire glen (unwilling to turn my face homeward, in spite of the persistent attacks of swarms of black and angry midges) the hollows and fissures which line yon mural precipices become indistinct at first, then cease to be visible. The rugged outline of the heights which hem in the horizon alone remains unaltered. The black wood which crowns the rounded hill to the right is a famous deer forest. The pine-trees which grow upon the slopes of the hill stand out stiffly against a column of violet cloud; they look for all