oad
by which I had myself come.

Once clear of this foolish fellow, I went on again up a gradual hill,
descended on the other side through the houses of a country village, and
came at last to the bottom of the main ascent leading to the Pentlands
and my destination. I was some way up when the fog began to lighten; a
little farther, and I stepped by degrees into a clear starry night, and
saw in front of me, and quite distinct, the summits of the Pentlands,
and behind, the valley of the Forth and the city of my late captivity
buried under a lake of vapour. I had but one encounter--that of a
farm-cart, which I heard, from a great way ahead of me, creaking nearer
in the night, and which passed me about the point of dawn like a thing
seen in a dream, with two silent figures in the inside nodding to the
horse's steps. I presume they were asleep; by the shawl about her head
and shoulders, one of them should be a woman. Soon, by concurrent steps,
the day began to break and the fog to subside and roll away. The east
grew luminous and was barred with chilly colours, and the Castle on its
rock, and the spires and chimneys of the upper town, took gradual shape,
and arose, like islands, out of the receding cloud. All about me was
still and sylvan; the road mounting and winding, with nowhere a sign of
any passenger, the birds chirping, I suppose for warmth, the boughs of
the trees knocking together, and the red leaves falling in the wind.

It was broad day, but still bitter cold and the sun not up, when I came
in view of my destination. A single gable and chimney of the cottage
peeped over the shoulder of the hill; not far off, and a trifle higher
on the mountain, a tall old whitewashed farmhouse stood among the trees,
beside a falling brook; beyond were rough hills of pasture. I bethought
me that shepherd folk were early risers, and if I were once seen
skulking in that neighbourhood it might prove the ruin of my prospects;
took advantage of a line of hedge, and worked myself up in its shadow
till I was come under the garden wall of my friend's house. The cottage
was a little quaint place of many rough-cast gables and grey roofs. It
had something the air of a rambling infinitesimal cathedral, the body of
it rising in the midst, two stories high, with a steep-pitched roof, and
sending out upon all hands (as it were chapter-houses, chapels, and
transepts) one-storied and dwarfish projections. To add to this
appearance, it was grotesqu