It's no use the legs aren't up to it anymore and he's barely an eighth of the way up the mountain when some kindly climbers opt to help him down. Confused and broken of spirit he is returned to the home and time stops passing once more.
(ii)
The fog whose descent has sent him north has one last trick to play: though he reaches the top, through bog and heather and bone-weary exhaustion,
it is the wrong mountain. He has misremembered the name and all he finds at the hard-won cairn is a gentle ***** down the other side and a group of picnickers who eye him with sympathy.
(iii)
A circle which was opened when he was fourteen; when a frozen night in a frozen tent was swept aside by a breathless climb to a dazzling white peak - Liathach - and a view over crashing cliffs into the wild blue bore the thought, "This, when the time comes, is where I will end it!" - is closed. And the body joins the half-flown soul in the mist-swallowed distance and beyond.