the fisherman. 'It is a bad place where even
the deer cannot go. But all the rest of Skye wass the fine land for
black cattle.'

As we neared the coast, he pointed out many places. 'Look there, Sir,
in that glen. I haf seen six cot houses smoking there, and now there is
not any left. There were three men of my own name had crofts on the
machars beyond the point, and if you go there you will only find the
marks of their bit gardens. You will know the place by the gean trees.'

When he put me ashore in a sandy bay between green ridges of bracken,
he was still harping upon the past. I got him to take a pound--for the
boat and not for the night's hospitality, for he would have beaten me
with an oar if I had suggested that. The last I saw of him, as I turned
round at the top of the hill, he had still his sail down, and was
gazing at the lands which had once been full of human dwellings and now
were desolate.

I kept for a while along the ridge, with the Sound of Sleat on my
right, and beyond it the high hills of Knoydart and Kintail. I was
watching for the _Tobermory_, but saw no sign of her. A steamer put out
from Mallaig, and there were several drifters crawling up the channel
and once I saw the white ensign and a destroyer bustled northward,
leaving a cloud of black smoke in her wake. Then, after consulting the
map, I struck across country, still keeping the higher ground, but,
except at odd minutes, being out of sight of the sea. I concluded that
my business was to get to the latitude of Ranna without wasting time.

So soon as I changed my course I had the Coolin for company. Mountains
have always been a craze of mine, and the blackness and mystery of
those grim peaks went to my head. I forgot all about Fosse Manor and
the Cotswolds. I forgot, too, what had been my chief feeling since I
left Glasgow, a sense of the absurdity of my mission. It had all seemed
too far-fetched and whimsical. I was running apparently no great
personal risk, and I had always the unpleasing fear that Blenkiron
might have been too clever and that the whole thing might be a mare's
nest. But that dark mountain mass changed my outlook. I began to have a
queer instinct that that was the place, that something might be
concealed there, something pretty damnable. I remember I sat on a top
for half an hour raking the hills with my glasses. I made out ugly
precipices, and glens which lost themselves in primeval blackness. When
the sun caught them--fo