There is in Glasgow a thoroughfare familiarly known as Balmanno Brae. It is in one of the poorer neighbourhoods of the town; and is in truth rather a squalid and uninteresting place; but it has the one striking peculiarity of being extraordinarily steep, having been built on the side of a considerable hill. Now one must have a powerful imagination to see in this long, abrupt, blue-gray thoroughfare—with its grimy pavements and house-fronts, and its gutters running with dirty water—any resemblance to the wide slopes of Ben Clebrig and the carolling rills that flow down to Loch Naver; but all the same Ronald had a curious fancy for mounting this long incline, and that at the hardest pace he could go. For sometimes, in that little room, he felt almost like a caged animal dying for a wider air, a more active work; and here at least was a height that enabled him to feel the power of his knees; while the mere upward progress was a kind of inspiriting thing, one always having a vague fancy that one is going to see farther in getting higher. Alas! there was but the one inevitable termination to these repeated climbings; and that not the wide panorama embracing Loch Loyal and Ben Hope and the far Kyle of Tongue, but a wretched little lane called Rotten Row—a double line of gloomy houses, with here and there an older-fashioned cottage with a thatched roof, and with everywhere pervading the close atmosphere an odour of boiled herrings. And then again, looking back, there was no yellow and wide-shining Strath-Terry, with its knolls of purple heather and its devious rippling burns, but only the great, dark, grim, mysterious city, weltering in its smoke, and dully groaning, as it were, under the grinding burden of its monotonous toil.
As the Twelfth of August drew near he became more and more restless. He had written to Lord Ailine to say that, if he could be of any use, he would take a run up to Inver-Mudal for a week or so, just to see things started for the season; but Lord Ailine had considerately refused the offer, saying that everything seemed going on well enough, except, indeed, that Lugar the Gordon setter was in a fair way of being spoilt, for that, owing to Ronald’s parting injunctions, there was not a man or boy about the place would subject the dog to any kind of chastisement or discipline whatever. And it sounded strange to Ronald to hear that he was still remembered away up there in the remote little hamlet.