ying along a deep
glen with high rocks on either side, and one of the little lochs which
he had often seen in these narrow straths, filling up the principal part
of the hollow.

Once or twice he found his feet splashing in water, but by bearing to
the left he found himself again on the dry pebbles, and in this way,
save for a few heavy masses in his path, he skirted what he rightly
concluded was a mountain loch, though whereabouts he could not tell.

Gaining a little courage as he realised all this, he ventured once upon
a shout, in the hope that it might be heard, but he did not repeat it,
for he stopped awe-stricken as his cry was repeated away to his left,
then on his right, and again and again, to go murmuring off as if a host
of the spirits of the air were mocking his peril.

But a little thought taught him that his surmise was right, and that he
was slowly making his way along a narrow glen, whose towering walls had
the property of reflecting back any sound; and, though he dared not
raise his voice again, he picked up the first heavy stone against which
he kicked, and hurled it from him with all his might.

A terribly dull, hollow, sullen plunge was the result, telling of the
great depth of the water, and this sound was taken up, to go echoing and
whispering away into the distance till it died out, and then seemed to
begin again in a low, dull roar, which puzzled him as he listened.

Just then it seemed to him that a warm breath of air came upon his
cheek, and this grew stronger, and the dull roar more plain. Then it
did not seem so dark, and he realised that a breeze was coming softly up
the glen, meeting him and wafting the wet mist away.

There was no doubt of this, and, though it was intensely dark where he
stood, it was a transparent darkness, through which he could see the
starry sky, forming as it were an arch of golden points starting on
either side from great walls of rock a thousand feet above the level of
the loch. This loch, in spite of the darkness, he could plainly see
now, reflecting from its level surface, which stretched away into the
darkness, the bright points of the light above.

Max stood thinking, and listened to the dull roar. He had been long
enough in the Highlands now to know that this was not the continuation
of the echoes he had raised, but the murmur of falling water, either of
some mountain torrent pouring into the lake, or by a reverse process the
lake emptying its superabu