were--three at least; but they lay so far on the one side or the other

that no stranger could have found them from the track. A large part of

the Ross is covered with big granite rocks, some of them larger than a

two-roomed house, one beside another, with fern and deep heather in

between them where the vipers breed. Anyway the wind was, it was always

sea air, as salt as on a ship; the gulls were as free as moorfowl over

all the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little, your eye would kindle

with the brightness of the sea. From the very midst of the land, on a

day of wind and a high spring, I have heard the Roost roaring, like a

battle where it runs by Aros, and the great and fearful voices of the

breakers that we call the Merry Men.

Aros itself--Aros Jay, I have heard the natives call it, and they say it

means _the House of God_--Aros itself was not properly a piece of the

Ross, nor was it quite an islet. It formed the south-west corner of the

land, fitted close to it, and was in one place only separated from the

coast by a little gut of the sea, not forty feet across the narrowest.

When the tide was full, this was clear and still, like a pool on a land

river; only there was a difference in the weeds and fishes, and the water

itself was green instead of brown; but when the tide went out, in the

bottom of the ebb, there was a day or two in every month when you could

pass dryshod from Aros to the mainland. There was some good pasture,

where my uncle fed the sheep he lived on; perhaps the feed was better

because the ground rose higher on the islet than the main level of the

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