In all this time her chief joy was to be found in writing long letters
to her dead mother, whom she imagined to be living somewhere between the
sunshine and the rain, an immanent presence. These letters she burnt
usually, though sometimes she made little boats of them and floated them
out to sea, and sometimes she pushed them into the shifting sands
through fissures on Lashnagar. They comforted her strangely; they were
adoration and love crystallized. Her only friendliness came from
Hunchback Wullie, when she could escape from the book-room and run down
to his hut.

It was a hard winter, this winter of philosophic doubt for souls and
bodies both. The wild gales kept the fishing-boats at home; the wild
weather had played havoc with the harvests, and often Marcella knew that
Wullie was hungry, though he never told her so. Whenever she went to the
hut she would manage to be absent from a meal beforehand, and going to
Jean, would ask for her ration of whatever was going. Down in the hut
she and Wullie would sit round the fire of driftwood, reaching down
dried herrings from the roof and toasting them on spits of wood for
their feast. And they would talk while the sea crept up and down outside
whispering, or dashed almost at the door shrieking.

One night as they sat toasting their fish and watching the salt
driftwood splutter and crackle with blue flames, Marcella asked
Wullie what he thought of philosophic doubt.

"I've been reading a book to father to-day, Wullie, that says we are all
unreal--that we are not here really, but only a dream."

Wullie sat back a little, turned the fish on his spit without speaking,