And that I in my bed might lie
Henceforth for ever more!_'

'Has it ever been tried?' I asked.

'Often. There's marble and slate quarries, and there was word o' coal
in Benbecula. And there's the iron mines at Ranna.'

'Where's that?' I asked.

'Up forenent Skye. We call in there, and generally bide a bit. There's
a heap of cargo for Ranna, and we usually get a good load back. But as
I tell ye, there's few Hielanders working there. Mostly Irish and lads
frae Fife and Falkirk way.'

I didn't pursue the subject, for I had found Demas's silver-mine. If
the _Tobermory_ lay at Ranna for a week, Gresson would have time to do
his own private business. Ranna would not be the spot, for the island
was bare to the world in the middle of a much-frequented channel. But
Skye was just across the way, and when I looked in my map at its big,
wandering peninsulas I concluded that my guess had been right, and that
Skye was the place to make for.

That night I sat on deck with Gresson, and in a wonderful starry
silence we watched the lights die out of the houses in the town, and
talked of a thousand things. I noticed--what I had had a hint of
before--that my companion was no common man. There were moments when he
forgot himself and talked like an educated gentleman: then he would
remember, and relapse into the lingo of Leadville, Colorado. In my
character of the ingenuous inquirer I set him posers about politics and
economics, the kind of thing I might have been supposed to pick up from
unintelligent browsing among little books. Generally he answered with
some slangy catchword, but occasionally he was interested beyond his
discretion, and treated me to a harangue like an equal. I discovered
another thing, that he had a craze for poetry, and a capacious memory
for it. I forgot how we drifted into the subject, but I remember he
quoted some queer haunting stuff which he said was Swinburne, and
verses by people I had heard of from Letchford at Biggleswick. Then he
saw by my silence that he had gone too far, and fell back into the
jargon of the West. He wanted to know about my plans, and we went down
into the cabin and had a look at the map. I explained my route, up
Morvern and round the head of Lochiel, and back to Oban by the east
side of Loch Linnhe.

'Got you,' he said. 'You've a hell of a walk before you. That bug never
bit me, and I guess I'm not envying you any. And after that, Mr Brand?'

'Back to Glasgow to do some wo