We reflected that the fine weather had now apparently broken,
and it would involve a loss of valuable time if we accepted his advice
to wait for a finer day, so we pressed forwards for quite two hours
across a dreary country, without a tree or a house or a human being to
enliven us on our way. Fortunately the wind and rain were behind us, and
we did not feel their pressure like our friend the sportsman, who was
going in the opposite direction. At last we came to what might be called
a village, where there were a few scattered houses and a burial-ground,
but no kirk that we could see. Near here we crossed a stream known as
Berriedale Water, and reached the last house, a farm, where our track
practically ended. We knocked at the door, which was opened by the
farmer himself, and his wife soon provided us with tea and oatmeal cake,
which we enjoyed after our seven or eight-mile walk. The wind howled in
the chimney and the rain rattled on the window-panes as we partook of
our frugal meal, and we were inclined to exclaim with the poet whose
name we knew not:
The day is cold and dark and dreary,
It rains, and the wind is never weary.
The people at the farm had come there from South Wales and did not know
much about the country.
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