'Often. There's marble and slate quarries, and there was word o'
coal in Benbecula. And there's the iron mines at Ranna.'

'Where's that?' I asked.

'Up forenent Skye. We call in there, and generally bide a bit.
There's a heap of cargo for Ranna, and we usually get a good load
back. But as I tell ye, there's few Hielanders working there. Mostly
Irish and lads frae Fife and Falkirk way.'

I didn't pursue the subject, for I had found Demas's silver-mine.
If the _Tobermory lay at Ranna for a week, Gresson would have time
to do his own private business. Ranna would not be the spot, for
the island was bare to the world in the middle of a much-frequented
channel. But Skye was just across the way, and when I looked in
my map at its big, wandering peninsulas I concluded that my guess
had been right, and that Skye was the place to make for.

That night I sat on deck with Gresson, and in a wonderful starry
silence we watched the lights die out of the houses in the town, and
talked of a thousand things. I noticed - what I had had a hint of
before - that my companion was no common man. There were
moments when he forgot himself and talked like an educated gentleman:
then he would remember, and relapse into the lingo of Leadville,
Colorado. In my character of the ingenuous inquirer I set him
posers about politics and economics, the kind of thing I might have
been supposed to pick up from unintelligent browsing among little
books. Generally he answered with some slangy catchword, but
occasionally he was interested beyond his discretion, and treated me
to a harangue like an equal. I discovered another thing, that he had