‘I was seeking a night’s lodging,’ I said.  ’I’ve had a long tramp on the hills, and I’d be glad of a chance of not going farther.’

‘We will haf no accommodation for a gentleman,’ he said gravely.

’I can sleep on the floor, if you can give me a blanket and a bite of supper.’

‘Indeed you will not,’ and he smiled slowly.  ’But I will ask the wife.  Mary, come here!’

An old woman appeared in answer to his call, a woman whose face was so old that she seemed like his mother.  In highland places one sex ages quicker than the other.

’This gentleman would like to bide the night.  I wass telling him that we had a poor small house, but he says he will not be minding it.’

She looked at me with the timid politeness that you find only in outland places.

’We can do our best, indeed, sir.  The gentleman can have Colin’s bed in the loft, but he will haf to be doing with plain food.  Supper is ready if you will come in now.’

I had a scrub with a piece of yellow soap at an adjacent pool in the burn and then entered a kitchen blue with peat-reek.  We had a meal of boiled fish, oatcakes and skim-milk cheese, with cups of strong tea to wash it down.  The old folk had the manners of princes.  They pressed food on me, and asked me no questions, till for very decency’s sake I had to put up a story and give some account of myself.

I found they had a son in the Argylls and a 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.’