Second Sight (4 page)
Authors: Neil M. Gunn
As she settled down in a corner of the couch, she looked around at the heads that had so recently been disturbed by Alick's experience of the occult. That uncanny Highland irruption might never have been, so decorously did it appear to have been smoothed away. She could almost find a small place in her heart for regretânow that the tumult was over! Her eyes rested on Harry's dark head, and remained there unconsciously.
Until, outside the gun-room door, quite distinctly, she heard a small sound. It struck right on her heart. The rattle of the gun-room door followed. Marjory showed she heard it, then Harry. Footsteps in the gun-room nowâslowâuncertain. Lady Marway frankly lifted her head. Each one in the room grew extremely still and silent. There was the soft thud of something falling, and a high-pitched smothered exclamation. But the footsteps drew nearerâslowlyâand, after what seemed a very long time, there were fingers against the door, finger-nails scratching the door. They saw the knob rattle and turn. The door openedâand Joyce appeared, blinking in the light.
“Pitch black in there. Ooh!” She was a geranium-lipped, blonde young woman of the world and rubbed her elbow.
“Where's George?” asked Lady Marway.
“Putting the car away. Why? Anything wrong?” She stared from one set of eyes to another.
“No, no!” said Lady Marway quickly.
“Pff!” said Joyce. “Gosh! Talk about a battery of eyes! You make me feel like a disembowelled spirit.”
Geoffrey laughed. And Marjory. Laughter became infectious. Sir John joined in.
Joyce looked at them. “I suppose you put out the light on purpose? You are a bunch of toughs.”
They laughed on, heartily.
Until, outside the gun-room door, quite distinctly, she heard a small sound. It struck right on her heart. The rattle of the gun-room door followed. Marjory showed she heard it, then Harry. Footsteps in the gun-room nowâslowâuncertain. Lady Marway frankly lifted her head. Each one in the room grew extremely still and silent. There was the soft thud of something falling, and a high-pitched smothered exclamation. But the footsteps drew nearerâslowlyâand, after what seemed a very long time, there were fingers against the door, finger-nails scratching the door. They saw the knob rattle and turn. The door openedâand Joyce appeared, blinking in the light.
“Pitch black in there. Ooh!” She was a geranium-lipped, blonde young woman of the world and rubbed her elbow.
“Where's George?” asked Lady Marway.
“Putting the car away. Why? Anything wrong?” She stared from one set of eyes to another.
“No, no!” said Lady Marway quickly.
“Pff!” said Joyce. “Gosh! Talk about a battery of eyes! You make me feel like a disembowelled spirit.”
Geoffrey laughed. And Marjory. Laughter became infectious. Sir John joined in.
Joyce looked at them. “I suppose you put out the light on purpose? You are a bunch of toughs.”
They laughed on, heartily.
Chapter Three
T
he following morning Sir John, Geoffrey, and Harry were up early, according to plan. George Marway, Sir John's nephew, was not a natural hunter of wild game, his inclinations running rather towards racing engines and racing skis, so he lay abed, to breakfast later with the ladies and, in due course, act as their chauffeur.
When Sir John left the breakfast table and went out to consult with Maclean, the head gamekeeper and his own personal stalker, he found that grey-bearded tough-fibred man of sixty with a concerned expression. Alick had not turned up. “It is unlike him to be late,” said Maclean.
Both men stood silent for a little, in a way characteristic of them. “Do you think he'll come?” asked Sir John, without any impatience.
“I'm hoping so,” said Maclean. “It's not like him to sleep in. Angus has gone over to see if he can see him. He shouldn't be long.”
Geoffrey and Harry came out and joined them. Sir John explained the position and then asked Maclean what his plans were. So they all looked at the sky, and saw the slow carry of the clouds over its blue field, and nodded as Maclean mentioned this hill and that corrie and the next pass. This was part of the game that the two younger men enjoyed, particularly Geoffrey, whose eyes grew so animated and lively that sometimes he could not help outrunning Maclean and describing conditions in a certain place before the wise old hunter had arrived at it. “That's so,” Maclean would say, and then Geoffrey would nod quickly, delighted.
It was characteristic of Geoffrey that his eye and his intelligence should be on the hunt, with a hope already growing in him that he would be given a certain stalk (even expressing his hope in such a remark as, “
That
should be good to-day”), while Harry was moved more by the general feeling that here was a new morning, with sky and wind and moor and pass and mountain forming a realm into which he was about to adventure for a whole long day. He usually stood on the edge of it, a faint smile on his face, not made any less pleasant in its expression by a cunning consciousness of what was moving in Geoffrey's mind. The rivalry, the eagerness, in Geoffrey distilled its own sort of humourâfor those who understood and appreciated it, and could ask themselves what would sport be, anyhow, without those keen qualities in some form or other.
But this morning Harry was not listening very well, and smiling not at all. And when he saw Angus, Geoffrey's stalker, appear round the corner of the garage, alone, his look concentrated upon him as if to search out his mind before he spoke.
Angus was sandy-haired and freckled, with a generous mouth, a loose-jointed body, and shy manners. Geoffrey and he got on very well together, for on the hill each was as keen as the other (to be keener being impossible) and Angus would cheerfully have endured through day and night and any privations so long as the hunt was on. He stayed with his mother, and in the garden of their cottage he grew a heavy crop of weeds.
He now faced Maclean solemnly and said, “There's no sign of him.”
“Were you at the house?”
“Yes. He was out very early in the morning.”
“What's keeping him, do you think?” Maclean's tone was sharp.
“I couldn't say,” replied Angus.
“Oh, never mind,” said Harry. “He'll turn up all right. You go ahead. And whenever Alick comes along, we'll follow to our own stalk.”
“Well, it's whatever you say,” Maclean answered. “But I am annoyed with him. If I had knownâI might have made other arrangements.”
“He may turn up,” said Sir John. “If you care to wait?”
“Certainly,” said Harry. “Please carry on. Do.” He smiled good-naturedly, his manner urgent, and so persuaded Sir John.
“In that case, perhaps,” Maclean suggested, addressing Sir John, “Mr. Smith could take the Rock Corrie beat. It should be good to-day. You and I perhaps could take the car round, and go in over the flows for the west side of Benuain. That would leave the Home Beat for Mr. Kingsley, so that if Alick does turn up late they wouldn't have so far to go.”
Geoffrey was smiling. The wind where it was, he had the stalk he wanted. And it had been his turn for the Home Beat. Lunches, rifles, ammunition were got together and a move was made towards the garage.
“Hard luck on you,” said Geoffrey, as Harry walked along with him. “But if you will let your stalker dabble in the occult!” He bravely restrained his laugh.
“What do you think has happened to him?” Harry asked.
“Happened? I should say he went and got blind drunk.”
“Why?”
“On the basis that any excuse is good enough for a man constituted like himâto put it nicely.”
“Still feeling a bit sore?”
“Me sore?” Geoffrey's astonishment broke on a laugh. “Now in the light of this bright morning, weren't youâto put it very mildlyâa bit fantastic last night? Own up, now!”
“I wonder,” said Harry.
“That's right. You keep on wondering!”
The cocksure, complacent element in Geoffrey's manner irritated Harry, though he was used to it, but now they had overtaken Sir John.
When they had gone, Harry turned back to the house, quite certain of two things: that Alick would not turn up and that Angus knew more than he had said. I shouldn't mind laying a bet that he didn't even go to Alick's home! he thought. Though all there might be in that thought, he couldn't fathom.
But it made him very uneasy. The loss of the day's stalking he did not mindâeven if Alick might have had a little consideration for him! And then his conscience was suddenly struck: What if Alick had found out that his ghastly experience had become a whole night's debating topic in the Lodge? Damn that! said Harry, experiencing a hot sting of vexation and shame.
He didn't want to engage in talk with any of the others at the moment, and they should be appearing soon. Helen was often up before all of them. But perhaps she hadn't slept too well last night! Would he chance ringing for Mairi? He rang.
She appeared and when he had greeted her he asked:
“You haven't any idea why Alick didn't turn up this morning, I suppose?”
“No, sir.”
“You didn't happen to see him last nightâafterwards?”
“No, sir.”
“You have no ideaâwhere he could have gone?”
“No, sir.”
He gave her a moment. “What do you think has happened to him?”
“I couldn't say, sir.”
She was pale and strained, but cool.
“Excuse me asking you,” he exclaimed, with his quick friendly smile, “but I feel worried a bit. It's all right.”
She hesitated for about two seconds, then turned and went out.
They are a communicative people! he thought, picking up a walking-stick by the gun-room door. He would scout around a bit and give himself time to think it over.
Corbreac Lodge faced slightly west of south, and from its front door the brown gravel road, after a preliminary curve, ran fairly straight and only slightly downhill, before it dipped out of sight and, about three-quarters of a mile away, merged in the main east to west highway, which was narrow enough to require poles at intervals to mark “passing places”. This prospect of moor and distant peak in front of the house was extensive, and on suitable evenings provided some exquisite light effects.
Harry looked along its farthest prospect now and thought of Helen.
More than once in the last four years, Helen, when alone at the hour of sunset, had had to turn away into the house and up to her room. Not the beauty, not the loneliness, not the stillnessâ¦she did not know what it was affected her so strongly, and never quite let herself find out. He remembered, not what she had said, but the look in her eyes.
If there was nothing much to be seen except moor and mountain from the south, west, and north sides of the Lodge, on the east side (on which the gun-room door gave) the ground, after a level hundred yards, dipped fairly steeply down a short hill-side of birch and hazel by the Corr River. This small river made a winding wooded glen of intimate beauty, full of bird life and fresh scents and some obscure element of secrecy.
Less than two miles farther down, it flattened out for a space into what was the old crofting township of Clachvor, now derelict, while about the same distance up stream, where it curved eastward, there were the cottages of Corbeg, from which the Lodge drew its necessary labour.
As he went down the serpentine path the scent of birch and bracken drew his eyes to first traces of autumn colour in their greenness, to faintly stirring movements of the wind amongst them, and all at once his disappointment at not being on the hill passed from him. He got the feeling of being on holiday and all by himself; and something deep in him quietly exulted in this. He had had the experience once or twice before. You get away from everyone, not purposefully or by desire, but by what seems an unlucky chance, and then suddenly you find you have wandered right into yourself, and there you are standing upright, amused and pleased at finding yourself alone.
He knew on the instant that he needed this holiday, and being in no hurry he would make the best of it. A fellow can be so long away from himself, he thought, that he loses the feeling of being an individual and in the round.
The freshness, the fragrance, the ease.⦠It was a cloudy morning, with no blue opening showing, the sort of morning that in the Highlands can be grey and incommunicably sad, until, by looking at growing things near you, particularly after rain or mist, you get a vivid apprehension of colour and scent, a small delicious shock. Harry approached the bank of the small river and stood looking into a pool.
The water was low and clear, with long fingers of greenish slime telling their tale of a dry summer. Salmon came up here to spawn, and for a day or two, after the height of a flood, the fishing was often excitingly good. But when the floods had gone down the salmon lay in deep rock pools and refused to come to any lure. How Maclean managed to get one now and then for the table was supposed to be a mystery.
Of course, in a real sense, thought Harry, it is a mystery; and standing there by the pool he involuntarily visualised the rites. Cookâa woman of strong character and slightly deafâinforms Maclean on Monday that he must get a salmon for Wednesday's dinner. After a certain interval of silence, Maclean solemnly replies that he will see what can be done about it, but that it might be as well if she did not rely on getting it, for the river is low and no fish are running. As she is not interested in the height of the river or the habits of salmon, she says no more on the subject, and they part like two Covenanters who have adequately encompassed the doctrine of predestination, Cook unswerving, Maclean's bearded countenance gravely covering his annoyance.
Then at daybreak on Wednesday, before anyone is astir, Maclean goes down to one of the rock pools on the Corr with his salmon rod, game bag, and book of flies. He selects a “Black Dog” of enormous size from which the dressing has been almost entirely worn away. Having set up his rod and line, he attaches the fly directly to the end of the line, dispensing with the refinement of a gut cast. Thus equipped, he approaches his pool with care, knowing precisely where a certain fish will be lying. It may be that he casts his fly out over the waterâand over the fishâbut as the fish won't come to the fly he has perforce to make the fly go to the fish. Which indeed it does quite naturally by sinking, guided by the rod, down beside the salmon. The fish may now technically be said to have stopped the fly, whereupon Maclean, in the ritual of fishing, “strikes”.
At first Sir John had been astonished at Maclean's mysterious skill and asked him what fly he had used.
“Oh just a âBlack Dog',” said Maclean.
“Surely a
very
small size?”
“Indeed, sometimes it seems small enough,” replied Maclean gravely.
Sir John, in his innocence, had been deeply interested and had pressed the matter to the point of getting Maclean to accompany him during a whole day's fruitless fishing in clear pools. “There was maybe just too much sun,” said Maclean at the end of the day, “and not enough wind.”
As Harry pursued his way up the river path, he thought to himself what a torture that day must have been to Maclean. For he dared not tell his new employer of his unorthodox methods. Sir John, the Cook and Maclean. He began smiling to himself, seeing their personalities moving before him, in a grave elderly drama. Sir John innocent, Maclean with a scar on his conscience, the Cook dominant.
It was a pleasant but somehow dark humour, as if there were in fact something of ancient ritual in it, and at the next pool, when he stopped to look into the water to see if he could see a salmon, he gave an involuntary shudder, for it suddenly came upon him that what he might see would be Alick's drowned body.
He actually had to visit the five deep pools to make sure that the body was not in any one of them, his legs dragging him, tremulous, to the last rocky ledge.
It was rather a horrid experience and he did not like it, because it pierced his detachment. And when he stood back, there were the birches, with a drooping yellow streak here and there, and the dark mature green of the bracken, so graceful, so beautifulâso still.
How swift the change in a mood from delight to fear! And back againâor half-way, holding consciousness of both! As if, in truth, there were some panic something or other inhabiting this half-mile of narrow wooded glen and rock-pool.
Harry turned his face to the widening valley and presently saw the half-dozen houses of Corbeg on the other side of the stream on comparatively flat ground. They, too, seemed very still, with some motionless cattle and sheep dotted here and there on the slow-rising slopes behind. Two of the outlying houses were thatched, their humped roofs outgrowths of the landscape. The scene was more lonely than anything he had yet seen in this lonely countryâuntil a movement in the river a little higher up arrested him. The head of an otter? he wondered. Some tilted flagstones and boulders made a perfect hiding-place. As he approached them stealthily, a little boy darted away on the other side, splashing through a yard or two of shallows, and was up the short slope and into the shelter of some stunted birches before he had quite seen him. Poaching! Hunting one of Maclean's sacred and nominated beasts! The young rascal!
T
he following morning Sir John, Geoffrey, and Harry were up early, according to plan. George Marway, Sir John's nephew, was not a natural hunter of wild game, his inclinations running rather towards racing engines and racing skis, so he lay abed, to breakfast later with the ladies and, in due course, act as their chauffeur.
When Sir John left the breakfast table and went out to consult with Maclean, the head gamekeeper and his own personal stalker, he found that grey-bearded tough-fibred man of sixty with a concerned expression. Alick had not turned up. “It is unlike him to be late,” said Maclean.
Both men stood silent for a little, in a way characteristic of them. “Do you think he'll come?” asked Sir John, without any impatience.
“I'm hoping so,” said Maclean. “It's not like him to sleep in. Angus has gone over to see if he can see him. He shouldn't be long.”
Geoffrey and Harry came out and joined them. Sir John explained the position and then asked Maclean what his plans were. So they all looked at the sky, and saw the slow carry of the clouds over its blue field, and nodded as Maclean mentioned this hill and that corrie and the next pass. This was part of the game that the two younger men enjoyed, particularly Geoffrey, whose eyes grew so animated and lively that sometimes he could not help outrunning Maclean and describing conditions in a certain place before the wise old hunter had arrived at it. “That's so,” Maclean would say, and then Geoffrey would nod quickly, delighted.
It was characteristic of Geoffrey that his eye and his intelligence should be on the hunt, with a hope already growing in him that he would be given a certain stalk (even expressing his hope in such a remark as, “
That
should be good to-day”), while Harry was moved more by the general feeling that here was a new morning, with sky and wind and moor and pass and mountain forming a realm into which he was about to adventure for a whole long day. He usually stood on the edge of it, a faint smile on his face, not made any less pleasant in its expression by a cunning consciousness of what was moving in Geoffrey's mind. The rivalry, the eagerness, in Geoffrey distilled its own sort of humourâfor those who understood and appreciated it, and could ask themselves what would sport be, anyhow, without those keen qualities in some form or other.
But this morning Harry was not listening very well, and smiling not at all. And when he saw Angus, Geoffrey's stalker, appear round the corner of the garage, alone, his look concentrated upon him as if to search out his mind before he spoke.
Angus was sandy-haired and freckled, with a generous mouth, a loose-jointed body, and shy manners. Geoffrey and he got on very well together, for on the hill each was as keen as the other (to be keener being impossible) and Angus would cheerfully have endured through day and night and any privations so long as the hunt was on. He stayed with his mother, and in the garden of their cottage he grew a heavy crop of weeds.
He now faced Maclean solemnly and said, “There's no sign of him.”
“Were you at the house?”
“Yes. He was out very early in the morning.”
“What's keeping him, do you think?” Maclean's tone was sharp.
“I couldn't say,” replied Angus.
“Oh, never mind,” said Harry. “He'll turn up all right. You go ahead. And whenever Alick comes along, we'll follow to our own stalk.”
“Well, it's whatever you say,” Maclean answered. “But I am annoyed with him. If I had knownâI might have made other arrangements.”
“He may turn up,” said Sir John. “If you care to wait?”
“Certainly,” said Harry. “Please carry on. Do.” He smiled good-naturedly, his manner urgent, and so persuaded Sir John.
“In that case, perhaps,” Maclean suggested, addressing Sir John, “Mr. Smith could take the Rock Corrie beat. It should be good to-day. You and I perhaps could take the car round, and go in over the flows for the west side of Benuain. That would leave the Home Beat for Mr. Kingsley, so that if Alick does turn up late they wouldn't have so far to go.”
Geoffrey was smiling. The wind where it was, he had the stalk he wanted. And it had been his turn for the Home Beat. Lunches, rifles, ammunition were got together and a move was made towards the garage.
“Hard luck on you,” said Geoffrey, as Harry walked along with him. “But if you will let your stalker dabble in the occult!” He bravely restrained his laugh.
“What do you think has happened to him?” Harry asked.
“Happened? I should say he went and got blind drunk.”
“Why?”
“On the basis that any excuse is good enough for a man constituted like himâto put it nicely.”
“Still feeling a bit sore?”
“Me sore?” Geoffrey's astonishment broke on a laugh. “Now in the light of this bright morning, weren't youâto put it very mildlyâa bit fantastic last night? Own up, now!”
“I wonder,” said Harry.
“That's right. You keep on wondering!”
The cocksure, complacent element in Geoffrey's manner irritated Harry, though he was used to it, but now they had overtaken Sir John.
When they had gone, Harry turned back to the house, quite certain of two things: that Alick would not turn up and that Angus knew more than he had said. I shouldn't mind laying a bet that he didn't even go to Alick's home! he thought. Though all there might be in that thought, he couldn't fathom.
But it made him very uneasy. The loss of the day's stalking he did not mindâeven if Alick might have had a little consideration for him! And then his conscience was suddenly struck: What if Alick had found out that his ghastly experience had become a whole night's debating topic in the Lodge? Damn that! said Harry, experiencing a hot sting of vexation and shame.
He didn't want to engage in talk with any of the others at the moment, and they should be appearing soon. Helen was often up before all of them. But perhaps she hadn't slept too well last night! Would he chance ringing for Mairi? He rang.
She appeared and when he had greeted her he asked:
“You haven't any idea why Alick didn't turn up this morning, I suppose?”
“No, sir.”
“You didn't happen to see him last nightâafterwards?”
“No, sir.”
“You have no ideaâwhere he could have gone?”
“No, sir.”
He gave her a moment. “What do you think has happened to him?”
“I couldn't say, sir.”
She was pale and strained, but cool.
“Excuse me asking you,” he exclaimed, with his quick friendly smile, “but I feel worried a bit. It's all right.”
She hesitated for about two seconds, then turned and went out.
They are a communicative people! he thought, picking up a walking-stick by the gun-room door. He would scout around a bit and give himself time to think it over.
Corbreac Lodge faced slightly west of south, and from its front door the brown gravel road, after a preliminary curve, ran fairly straight and only slightly downhill, before it dipped out of sight and, about three-quarters of a mile away, merged in the main east to west highway, which was narrow enough to require poles at intervals to mark “passing places”. This prospect of moor and distant peak in front of the house was extensive, and on suitable evenings provided some exquisite light effects.
Harry looked along its farthest prospect now and thought of Helen.
More than once in the last four years, Helen, when alone at the hour of sunset, had had to turn away into the house and up to her room. Not the beauty, not the loneliness, not the stillnessâ¦she did not know what it was affected her so strongly, and never quite let herself find out. He remembered, not what she had said, but the look in her eyes.
If there was nothing much to be seen except moor and mountain from the south, west, and north sides of the Lodge, on the east side (on which the gun-room door gave) the ground, after a level hundred yards, dipped fairly steeply down a short hill-side of birch and hazel by the Corr River. This small river made a winding wooded glen of intimate beauty, full of bird life and fresh scents and some obscure element of secrecy.
Less than two miles farther down, it flattened out for a space into what was the old crofting township of Clachvor, now derelict, while about the same distance up stream, where it curved eastward, there were the cottages of Corbeg, from which the Lodge drew its necessary labour.
As he went down the serpentine path the scent of birch and bracken drew his eyes to first traces of autumn colour in their greenness, to faintly stirring movements of the wind amongst them, and all at once his disappointment at not being on the hill passed from him. He got the feeling of being on holiday and all by himself; and something deep in him quietly exulted in this. He had had the experience once or twice before. You get away from everyone, not purposefully or by desire, but by what seems an unlucky chance, and then suddenly you find you have wandered right into yourself, and there you are standing upright, amused and pleased at finding yourself alone.
He knew on the instant that he needed this holiday, and being in no hurry he would make the best of it. A fellow can be so long away from himself, he thought, that he loses the feeling of being an individual and in the round.
The freshness, the fragrance, the ease.⦠It was a cloudy morning, with no blue opening showing, the sort of morning that in the Highlands can be grey and incommunicably sad, until, by looking at growing things near you, particularly after rain or mist, you get a vivid apprehension of colour and scent, a small delicious shock. Harry approached the bank of the small river and stood looking into a pool.
The water was low and clear, with long fingers of greenish slime telling their tale of a dry summer. Salmon came up here to spawn, and for a day or two, after the height of a flood, the fishing was often excitingly good. But when the floods had gone down the salmon lay in deep rock pools and refused to come to any lure. How Maclean managed to get one now and then for the table was supposed to be a mystery.
Of course, in a real sense, thought Harry, it is a mystery; and standing there by the pool he involuntarily visualised the rites. Cookâa woman of strong character and slightly deafâinforms Maclean on Monday that he must get a salmon for Wednesday's dinner. After a certain interval of silence, Maclean solemnly replies that he will see what can be done about it, but that it might be as well if she did not rely on getting it, for the river is low and no fish are running. As she is not interested in the height of the river or the habits of salmon, she says no more on the subject, and they part like two Covenanters who have adequately encompassed the doctrine of predestination, Cook unswerving, Maclean's bearded countenance gravely covering his annoyance.
Then at daybreak on Wednesday, before anyone is astir, Maclean goes down to one of the rock pools on the Corr with his salmon rod, game bag, and book of flies. He selects a “Black Dog” of enormous size from which the dressing has been almost entirely worn away. Having set up his rod and line, he attaches the fly directly to the end of the line, dispensing with the refinement of a gut cast. Thus equipped, he approaches his pool with care, knowing precisely where a certain fish will be lying. It may be that he casts his fly out over the waterâand over the fishâbut as the fish won't come to the fly he has perforce to make the fly go to the fish. Which indeed it does quite naturally by sinking, guided by the rod, down beside the salmon. The fish may now technically be said to have stopped the fly, whereupon Maclean, in the ritual of fishing, “strikes”.
At first Sir John had been astonished at Maclean's mysterious skill and asked him what fly he had used.
“Oh just a âBlack Dog',” said Maclean.
“Surely a
very
small size?”
“Indeed, sometimes it seems small enough,” replied Maclean gravely.
Sir John, in his innocence, had been deeply interested and had pressed the matter to the point of getting Maclean to accompany him during a whole day's fruitless fishing in clear pools. “There was maybe just too much sun,” said Maclean at the end of the day, “and not enough wind.”
As Harry pursued his way up the river path, he thought to himself what a torture that day must have been to Maclean. For he dared not tell his new employer of his unorthodox methods. Sir John, the Cook and Maclean. He began smiling to himself, seeing their personalities moving before him, in a grave elderly drama. Sir John innocent, Maclean with a scar on his conscience, the Cook dominant.
It was a pleasant but somehow dark humour, as if there were in fact something of ancient ritual in it, and at the next pool, when he stopped to look into the water to see if he could see a salmon, he gave an involuntary shudder, for it suddenly came upon him that what he might see would be Alick's drowned body.
He actually had to visit the five deep pools to make sure that the body was not in any one of them, his legs dragging him, tremulous, to the last rocky ledge.
It was rather a horrid experience and he did not like it, because it pierced his detachment. And when he stood back, there were the birches, with a drooping yellow streak here and there, and the dark mature green of the bracken, so graceful, so beautifulâso still.
How swift the change in a mood from delight to fear! And back againâor half-way, holding consciousness of both! As if, in truth, there were some panic something or other inhabiting this half-mile of narrow wooded glen and rock-pool.
Harry turned his face to the widening valley and presently saw the half-dozen houses of Corbeg on the other side of the stream on comparatively flat ground. They, too, seemed very still, with some motionless cattle and sheep dotted here and there on the slow-rising slopes behind. Two of the outlying houses were thatched, their humped roofs outgrowths of the landscape. The scene was more lonely than anything he had yet seen in this lonely countryâuntil a movement in the river a little higher up arrested him. The head of an otter? he wondered. Some tilted flagstones and boulders made a perfect hiding-place. As he approached them stealthily, a little boy darted away on the other side, splashing through a yard or two of shallows, and was up the short slope and into the shelter of some stunted birches before he had quite seen him. Poaching! Hunting one of Maclean's sacred and nominated beasts! The young rascal!
Other books
Baghdad or Bust by William Robert Stanek
The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection by Gardner Dozois
Victoria and the Rogue by Meg Cabot
Blurred Memories by Kallysten
Originator by Joel Shepherd
Taking Her There by Olivia Brynn
Red Hot Party by Dragon, Cheryl
Hot & Bothered by Susan Andersen
El robo de la Mona Lisa by Carson Morton
Wet Work - A Greg Kelton Short Story by Brian Springer
