, and
ye'll need to be by-ordinar common ... If I was you, I would daunder
about here for a bit, and no arrive at your hotel till after dark. Then
ye can have your supper and gang to bed. The Muirtown train leaves at
half-seven in the morning ... Na, ye can't come with me. It wouldna do
for us to be seen thegither. If I meet ye in the street I'll never let
on I know ye.'

Amos climbed into the gig and jolted off home. I went down to the shore
and sat among the rocks, finishing about tea-time the remains of my
provisions. In the mellow gloaming I strolled into the clachan and got
a boat to put me over to the inn. It proved to be a comfortable place,
with a motherly old landlady who showed me to my room and promised ham
and eggs and cold salmon for supper. After a good wash, which I needed,
and an honest attempt to make my clothes presentable, I descended to
the meal in a coffee-room lit by a single dim parafin lamp.

The food was excellent, and, as I ate, my spirits rose. In two days I
should be back in London beside Blenkiron and somewhere within a day's
journey of Mary. I could picture no scene now without thinking how Mary
fitted into it. For her sake I held Biggleswick delectable, because I
had seen her there. I wasn't sure if this was love, but it was
something I had never dreamed of before, something which I now hugged
the thought of. It made the whole earth rosy and golden for me, and
life so well worth living that I felt like a miser towards the days to
come.

I had about finished supper, when I was joined by another guest. Seen
in the light of that infamous lamp, he seemed a small, alert fellow,
with a bushy, black moustache, and black hair parted in the middle. He
had fed already and appeared to be hungering for human society.

In three minutes he had told me that he had come down from Portree and
was on his way to Leith. A minute later he had whipped out a card on
which I read 'J. J. Linklater', and in the corner the name of
Hatherwick Bros. His accent betrayed that he hailed from the west.

'I've been up among the distilleries,' he informed me. 'It's a poor
business distillin' in these times, wi' the teetotallers yowlin' about
the nation's shame and the way to lose the war. I'm a temperate man
mysel', but I would think shame to spile decent folks' business. If the
Government want to stop the drink, let them buy us out. They've
permitted us to invest good money in the trade, and they must see that
we get