The witch in the wood

"THE LAND OF LOTHIAN AND ORKNEY lies in the northern latitudes. It is a country of bog and mountain, where the wind whistles all day, and at night the turf fires glow with small flames in a kind of rusty saffron. The nearest neighbors live ten miles apart, and the grouse say "Talk," and the wild merlins can be seen sweeping over the swelling lands in their pursuit of pipits and larks and the white-bottomed wheatears which dodge into gorse bushes. It is all heather and loveliness, and the town people say: "Aow, ain't it 'orrible. I can't bear them lonely places with nothink in them. It's sort of melancholy, annit?""