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On the other side, the fields, broken here and there by dry-stone dykes, a ditch or two, and one long thicket of shrubs, rose in a gentle ascent to the lime-kiln. We knew every foot of the way as 'twere in our own pockets, and had small difficulty in pushing on in the dark.
"Scoffer!" cried Gordon, and M'Iver said no more, but led us through the dark to the house whose light so cheerfully smiled before us. The house, when we came to it, proved a trig little edifice of far greater comfort than most of the common houses of the Highlands not a dry-stone bigging but a rubble tenement, very snugly thacked and windowed, and having a piece of kail-plot at its rear.
Away I followed hotly, the others giving chase and halloaing in the background. Dyke after dyke we flew headlong in the grey-white mist the space still even betwixt us then, at a sudden high dry-stone wall, which loomed up as a wave of darkness seaward, my horse jumped short, and down we fell together, on the turf beyond.
The lough at last ended in a river broad and shallow like the rest, but that it may be passed when it is deeper, there is a bridge over it. Beyond it is a valley called Glensheals, inhabited by the clan of Macrae. Here we found a village called Auknasheals, consisting of many huts, perhaps twenty, built all of dry-stone, that is, stones piled up without mortar.
To have heard him amongst his labourers that morning, it was plain to see that they were not in the category of machinery. The sharp barking of this dog aroused him in the midst of his imprecations, and looking over the dry-stone wall that inclosed the field, he saw a horseman coming along at a sharp canter, and taking the fences as they came like a man in a hunting-field.
Thus mirthfully he swung down the rough grass-grown road, past the railway, till he came to a point where heath began to merge in pasture, and dry-stone walls split the moor into fields. Suddenly his pace slackened and song died on his lips. For, approaching from the right by a tributary path was the Poet. Mr. Heritage saw him afar off and waved a friendly hand.
... Whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him. ECCLES. x. 8. What is meant here is, probably, not such a hedge as we are accustomed to see, but a dry-stone wall, or, perhaps, an earthen embankment, in the crevices of which might lurk a snake to sting the careless hand. The connection and purpose of the text are somewhat obscure.
Of such loiterers, the prudent took the longer and circuitous, but more open route, to attain their place in the march, by keeping at some distance from the infantry, and making their way through the enclosures to the right, at the expense of leaping over or pulling down the dry-stone fences.
In the morning we are running off Gozo, a subordinate island to Malta, intersected with innumerable enclosures of dry-stone dykes similar to those used in Selkirkshire, and this likeness is increased by the appearance of sundry square towers of ancient days. In former times this was believed to be Calypso's island, and the cave of the enchantress is still shown.
But the ground through which the mountaineers must have descended, although not of great extent, was impracticable in its character, being not only marshy, but intersected with walls of dry-stone, and traversed in its whole length by a very broad and deep ditch, circumstances which must have given the musketry of the regulars dreadful advantages, before the mountaineers could have used their swords, on which they were taught to rely.
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