his friends that I had been so far north. However, that was for
Amos to advise me on, and about noon I picked up my waterproof
with its bursting pockets and set off on a long detour up the coast.
All that blessed day I scarcely met a soul. I passed a distillery which
seemed to have quit business, and in the evening came to a little
town on the sea where I had a bed and supper in a superior kind
of public-house.

Next day I struck southward along the coast, and had two experiences
of interest. I had a good look at Ranna, and observed that
the _Tobermory was no longer there. Gresson had only waited to get
his job finished; he could probably twist the old captain any way he
wanted. The second was that at the door of a village smithy I saw
the back of the Portuguese Jew. He was talking Gaelic this time -
good Gaelic it sounded, and in that knot of idlers he would have
passed for the ordinariest kind of gillie.

He did not see me, and I had no desire to give him the chance,
for I had an odd feeling that the day might come when it would be
good for us to meet as strangers.

That night I put up boldly in the inn at Broadford, where they
fed me nobly on fresh sea-trout and I first tasted an excellent
liqueur made of honey and whisky. Next morning I was early
afoot, and well before midday was in sight of the narrows of the
Kyle, and the two little stone clachans which face each other across
the strip of sea.
About two miles from the place at a turn of the road I came
upon a farmer's gig, drawn up by the wayside, with the horse
cropping the moorland grass. A man sat on the bank smoking,