This was a bit of a steep broken hill that overlooked upon the west a moorish valley, full of ink-black pools.

These presently drained into a burn that made off, with little noise and no celerity of pace, about the corner of the hill.

On the far side the ground swelled into a bare heath, black with junipers, and spotted with the presence of the standing stones for which the place was famous.

They were many in that part, shapeless, white with lichen--you would have said with age: and had made their abode there for untold centuries, since first the heathens shouted for their installation.

The ancients had hallowed them to some ill religion, and their neighbourhood had long been avoided by the prudent before the fall of day; but of late, on the upspringing of new requirements, these lonely stones on the moor had again become a place of assembly.