! Missie
Galbraith! Ginny!" but no answer came back. The mountain was as
still as at midnight. She ran to the spot where they had parted,
and along the other path: it was plainer than that where she had
been so idly forgetting herself. She hurried on, wildly calling as
she ran.

In the mean time Ginevra, having found the path indubitable, and
imagining it led straight to the door of Nicie's mother's cottage,
and that Nicie would be after her in a moment, thinking also to have
a bit of fun with her, set off dancing and running so fast, that by
the time Nicie came to herself, she was a good mile from her. What
a delight it was to be thus alone upon the grand mountain! with the
earth banished so far below, and the great rocky heap climbing and
leading and climbing up and up towards the sky!

Ginny was not in the way of thinking much about God. Little had been
taught her concerning him, and nothing almost that was pleasant to
meditate upon--nothing that she could hide in her heart, and be
dreadfully glad about when she lay alone in her little bed,
listening to the sound of the burn that ran under her window. But
there was in her soul a large wilderness ready for the voice that
should come crying to prepare the way of the king.

The path was after all a mere sheep-track, and led her at length
into a lonely hollow in the hill-side, with a swampy peat-bog at the
bottom of it. She stopped. The place looked unpleasant, reminding
her of how she always felt when she came unexpectedly upon Angus Mac
Pholp. She would go no further alone; she would wait till Nicie
overtook her. It must have been just in such places that the people
possessed with devils--only Miss Machar always made her read the
word, demons--ran about! As she thought thus, a lone-hearted bird
uttered a single, wailing cry, strange to her ear. The cry remained
solitary, unanswered, and then first suddenly she felt that there
was nobody there but herself, and the feeling had in it a pang of
uneasiness. But she was a brave child; nothing frightened her much
except her father; she turned and went slowly back to the edge of
the hollow: Nicie must by this time be visible.

In her haste and anxiety, however, Nicie had struck into another
sheep-track, and was now higher up the hill; so that Ginny could see
no living thing nearer than in the valley below: far down there--and
it was some comfort, in the desolation that now began to invade
her--she saw