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 work 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.