THE DOUBLE ALIBI
Glen Aline is probably the loneliest place in the lone moorlands of
Western Galloway. The country is entirely pastoral, and I fancy that the
very pasture is bad enough. Stretches of deer-grass and ling, rolling
endlessly to the feet of Cairnsmure and the circle of the eastern hills,
cannot be good feeding for the least Epicurean of sheep, and sheep do not
care for the lank and sour herbage by the sides of the "lanes," as the
half-stagnant, black, deep, and weedy burns are called in this part of
the country. The scenery is not unattractive, but tourists never wander
to these wastes where no inns are, and even the angler seldom visits
them. Indeed, the fishing is not to be called good, and the "lanes,"
which "seep," as the Scotch say, through marshes and beneath low
hillsides, are not such excellent company as the garrulous and brawling
brooks of the Border or of the Highlands. As the lanes flow, however,
from far-away lochs, it happens that large trout make their way into
them--trout which, if hooked, offer a gallant resistance before they can
be hauled over the weeds that usually line the watercourses.
Partly for the sake of trying this kind of angling, partly from a
temporary distaste for the presence of men and women, partly for the
purpose of finishing a work styled "A History of the Unexplained," I once
spent a month in the solitudes of Glen Aline.
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