be rid of the infernal boat, and the hot summer scents coming
down the glen were comforting after the cold, salt smell of the sea.
The road lay up the side of a small bay, at the top of which a big
white house stood among gardens. Presently I had left the coast
and was in a glen where a brown salmon-river swirled through
acres of bog-myrtle. It had its source in a loch, from which the
mountain rose steeply - a place so glassy in that August forenoon
that every scar and wrinkle of the hillside were faithfully reflected.
After that I crossed a low pass to the head of another sea-lock, and,
following the map, struck over the shoulder of a great hill and ate
my luncheon far up on its side, with a wonderful vista of wood and
water below me.

All that morning I was very happy, not thinking about Gresson
or Ivery, but getting my mind clear in those wide spaces, and my
lungs filled with the brisk hill air. But I noticed one curious thing.
On my last visit to Scotland, when I covered more moorland miles
a day than any man since Claverhouse, I had been fascinated by the
land, and had pleased myself with plans for settling down in it. But
now, after three years of war and general rocketing, I felt less
drawn to that kind of landscape. I wanted something more green
and peaceful and habitable, and it was to the Cotswolds that my
memory turned with longing.

I puzzled over this till I realized that in all my Cotswold pictures a
figure kept going and coming - a young girl with a cloud of gold hair
and the strong, slim grace of a boy, who had sung 'Cherry Ripe' in a
moonlit garden. Up on that hillside I understood very clearly that I,
who had been as careless of women as any monk, had fallen wildly in
love with a child of half my age. I was loath to admit it, though for