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A CYPRIAN LANDSCAPE brink of the hill, like a dog with a bone, taking this thought away with me. The rain, meanwhile, had ceased, and the air was soft and fragrant ; but the sky was still charged with masses of purple cloud ; and a purple, dark as the bloom of the darkest grape, had settled down over the whole of the distant landscape. I almost fancied, as I looked, that I was in the heart of Inverness-shire or of Eoss-shire; and a feel of the Scotch Highlands came back to me with a gust of memories. I saw once more the silvery mists of morning, asleep over their own reflections in the glass of grey Loch Shiel : I saw the shining birches of Kinloch-Moidart. I felt the wet and heathery wind of evening, sweeping over the hills from Dalwhinnie to Loch Laggan. I half expected to see on the wide expanse before me the Highland train go by, with its load of autumnal cockneys. Then through these fancies the real land-scape asserted itself. Its colour was deeper than any on the hills in Scotland ; and, tried by a Scotch standard, there was somewhere something uncanny about it. The clouds lifted over the mountains ; and their leagues of spires and summits rose jagged against a clear streak of saffron ; resting on Pente-dactylon was the base of an immense rainbow, of which so little was visible that it looked like a luminous leaning column ; and where, a moment ago, I had imagined a whistling train, I saw slowly moving a small caravan of camels. The approach of evening was perceptible when

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