For he had come, all unwitting, to a turning of the ways, and his choice is the cause of this veracious history.
The place was high up on a bare moor, which showed a white lodge among pines, a white cottage in a green nook by a burnside, and no other marks of human dwelling.

To his left, which was the east, the heather rose to a low ridge of hill, much scarred with peat-bogs, behind which appeared the blue shoulder of a considerable mountain.

Before him the road was lost momentarily in the woods of a shooting-box, but reappeared at a great distance climbing a swell of upland which seemed to be the glacis of a jumble of bold summits.

There was a pass there, the map told him, which led into Galloway.

It was the road he had meant to follow, but as he sat on the milestone his purpose wavered.
For there seemed greater attractions in the country which lay to the westward.