er I repaired,
Scout-like, and gained the summit;'

but I do not think we need read more into the lines than that the boy
felt--as he scanned the country with his eyes, on the 'qui vive' at
every rise in the ground--the feelings of a scout, who questions
constantly the distant prospect.

And certainly the Pullwyke quarry crag rises most steeply from the
meeting-point of the two highways.

Next as to the Outgate crag, which you have chosen. I am out of love
with it. First, if the lads wanted to make sure of the ponies, they
would not have ascended it, but would have stayed just at the
Hawkshead side of Outgate, or at the village itself, at the point of
convergence of the ways.

Secondly, the crag can hardly be described as rising from the
meeting-point of two highways; only one highway passes near it.

The crag is of so curious a formation geologically, that I can't fancy
the poet describing his memory of it, without calling it a terraced
hill, or an ascent by natural terraces.

Then, again, the prospect is not sufficiently extended from it. The
stream not near enough, or rather not of size enough, to be heard.
Blelham Tarn is not too far to have added to the watery sound, it is
true, but the wind we suppose to have been north-east, and the sound
of the Blelham Tarn would be much carried away from him.

The present stone wall is not near the summit, and is of comparatively
recent date. It is difficult to believe from the slope of the outcrop
of rock that a wall could ever have been at the summit.

But there are two other vantage grounds intermediate between those
extremes, both of which were probably in the mind and memory of the
poet as he described the scene, and

'The intermitting prospect of the copse.
And plain beneath,'

allowed him by the mist. One of these is the High Crag, about
three-quarters of a mile from the divergence or convergence of the two
highways, which Dr. Cradock has selected.

There can be no doubt that this is the crag 'par excellence' for a
wide and extended look-out over all the country between Outgate and
Ambleside. Close at its summit there remain aged thorn trees, but no
trace of a wall.

But High Crag can hardly be said to have risen at 'the meeting-point
of two highways,' unless we are to understand the epithet
'far-stretched' as applying to the south-western slopes or skirts of
the hill;