rk for the cause,' I said lightly.

'Just so,' he said with a grin. 'It's a great life if you don't weaken.'

We steamed out of the bay next morning at dawn, and about nine o'clock
I got on shore at a little place called Lochaline. My kit was all on my
person, and my waterproof's pockets were stuffed with chocolates and
biscuits I had bought in Oban. The captain was discouraging. 'Ye'll get
your bellyful o' Hieland hills, Mr Brand, afore ye win round the loch
head. Ye'll be wishin' yerself back on the _Tobermory_.' But Gresson
speeded me joyfully on my way, and said he wished he were coming with
me. He even accompanied me the first hundred yards, and waved his hat
after me till I was round the turn of the road.

The first stage in that journey was pure delight. I was thankful to be
rid of the infernal boat, and the hot summer scents coming down the
glen were comforting after the cold, salt smell of the sea. The road
lay up the side of a small bay, at the top of which a big white house
stood among gardens. Presently I had left the coast and was in a glen
where a brown salmon-river swirled through acres of bog-myrtle. It had
its source in a loch, from which the mountain rose steeply--a place so
glassy in that August forenoon that every scar and wrinkle of the
hillside were faithfully reflected. After that I crossed a low pass to
the head of another sea-lock, and, following the map, struck over the
shoulder of a great hill and ate my luncheon far up on its side, with a
wonderful vista of wood and water below me.

All that morning I was very happy, not thinking about Gresson or Ivery,
but getting my mind clear in those wide spaces, and my lungs filled
with the brisk hill air. But I noticed one curious thing. On my last
visit to Scotland, when I covered more moorland miles a day than any
man since Claverhouse, I had been fascinated by the land, and had
pleased myself with plans for settling down in it. But now, after three
years of war and general rocketing, I felt less drawn to that kind of
landscape. I wanted something more green and peaceful and habitable,
and it was to the Cotswolds that my memory turned with longing.

I puzzled over this till I realized that in all my Cotswold pictures a
figure kept going and coming--a young girl with a cloud of gold hair
and the strong, slim grace of a boy, who had sung 'Cherry Ripe' in a
moonlit garden. Up on that hillside I understood very clearly that I,
who had been as careless