‘Mr McCaskie, sir,’ he said, ’ye’re the very model of a publisher’s traveller.  Ye’d better learn a few biographical details, which ye’ve maybe forgotten.  Ye’re an Edinburgh man, but ye were some years in London, which explains the way ye speak.  Ye bide at 6, Russell Street, off the Meadows, and ye’re an elder in the Nethergate U.F.  Kirk.  Have ye ony special taste ye could lead the crack on to, if ye’re engaged in conversation?’

I suggested the English classics.

’And very suitable.  Ye can try poalitics, too.  Ye’d better be a Free-trader but convertit by Lloyd George.  That’s a common case, 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.