aw the vision of Patmos!"

"I would no' be surprised."

"Na, Robin More; you would not be surprised if you saw a trout that
cantered or a horse that flew. You'd have an explanation. You're the
queer hard man to live with, Robin, with your explanations."

Willie John Boyd, the servant boy, removed his cutty pipe and hazarded a
suggestion.

"Queer things happened in the auld days."

"If there were queerer things nor you in the auld days," Alan laughed,
"it must have been like a circus."

But mightn't they both be right? wee Shane thought, and he trudging up
the mountain-side. His Uncle Alan knew an awful lot. There was none
could coax a trout from a glass-clear pool with a dry fly like Alan
Campbell. He knew the weather, when it would storm and when it would
clear, and from what point the wind would blow to-morrow. He could nurse
along the difficult flax and knew the lair of the otter and had a great
eye for hunting fox and a better eye for a horse than a Gipsy. Might
there not be things in nature, as he said, that none knew of? And
mightn't there be explanations for them, as Uncle Robin, who had read
every book, claimed there were? Mightn't they both be right, who thought
each other wrong, and they arguing by the red fire, fighting and
snarling like dogs and loving each other with the strange soft love of
lovers when the trees are a-rustle and the moon high?

Section 6

He had thought to come up to the top of the mountain where the cairn
was, and the dark and deepest lake, and to sit down in the heather and
wait half an hour maybe while the curlew called, and then have Dancing
Town take form and color before his eyes, hold it until every detail was
visible, and then fade gently out as twilight fades into night. He had
thought to be prepared and receptive.

But suddenly it was upon him, in the air, over the waters of Moyle....

A sweep of fear ran over him, and he grew cold, so strange it was, so
against nature. Clear and high, as in some old print, and white and
green, the town and shore came to him. The May afternoon was in it, hot
and golden, but the town itself was in morning sunlight. A clutter of
great houses and little houses, all white, a great church, and a squat
dun fort, and about it and in it were green spaces and palm-trees that
swayed to a ghostly breeze. And the green ran down to a white beach, and
on the beach foamy waves curled like a man's beard. And in the air the
town quivered and danced,