young boy in the Navy. But
they seemed disinclined to talk of them or of the war. By a mere
accident I hit on the old man's absorbing interest. He was passionate
about the land. He had taken part in long-forgotten agitations, and had
suffered eviction in some ancient landlords' quarrel farther north.
Presently he was pouring out to me all the woes of the crofter--woes
that seemed so antediluvian and forgotten that I listened as one would
listen to an old song. 'You who come from a new country will not haf
heard of these things,' he kept telling me, but by that peat fire I
made up for my defective education. He told me of evictions in the
year. One somewhere in Sutherland, and of harsh doings in the Outer
Isles. It was far more than a political grievance. It was the lament of
the conservative for vanished days and manners. 'Over in Skye wass the
fine land for black cattle, and every man had his bit herd on the
hillside. But the lairds said it wass better for sheep, and then they
said it wass not good for sheep, so they put it under deer, and now
there is no black cattle anywhere in Skye.' I tell you it was like sad
music on the bagpipes hearing that old fellow. The war and all things
modern meant nothing to him; he lived among the tragedies of his youth
and his prime.

I'm a Tory myself and a bit of a land-reformer, so we agreed well
enough. So well, that I got what I wanted without asking for it. I told
him I was going to Skye, and he offered to take me over in his boat in
the morning. 'It will be no trouble. Indeed no. I will be going that
way myself to the fishing.'

I told him that after the war, every acre of British soil would have to
be used for the men that had earned the right to it. But that did not
comfort him. He was not thinking about the land itself, but about the
men who had been driven from it fifty years before. His desire was not
for reform, but for restitution, and that was past the power of any
Government. I went to bed in the loft in a sad, reflective mood,
considering how in speeding our newfangled plough we must break down a
multitude of molehills and how desirable and unreplaceable was the life
of the moles.

In brisk, shining weather, with a wind from the south-east, we put off
next morning. In front was a brown line of low hills, and behind them,
a little to the north, that black toothcomb of mountain range which I
had seen the day before from the Arisaig ridge.

'That is the Coolin,' said