'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,