She said the man was a beast, it was filthy; but Εwan had started his whistling again, hardly heeding her, only the road and the car, he said Selden had shown a lot of sense in waiting till the local had a spot of coin. Been sick of unemployment and his wife wasn’t well—her that used to be Chris’s maid—remember?

—You speak as though you might do the same.

He laughed at that, cheerfully, I’m a Communist. And fell to his whistling again, but soberly. And when he next spoke there was steel in his voice, the steel of a cold, unimpassioned hate: I could tell long ago that Selden would rat; you can tell a rat easily among revolutionists—yeasty sentiment and blah about Justice. They think they’re in politics or a parlour game.

And what did he himself think it was? But she didn’t ask, didn’t want to hear more, wanted to forget Duncairn and all in it and that dreadful paper they had made her sign. And Ewan drove as though he owned the road and all the Howe and half of December and had specially arranged the storm effects, the storm coming rolling down from the Mounth and pelting across the grey fields in wan tides, now snow, now sleet, once, curling and foaming, combers of hail. The shrouded farms cowered in by their woods, here and there a ploughman wrapped to the ears went whistling up to the end of a rig, the lapwings flying, Lost; lost! their plaint above the wheel and fall of the snow.

Ellen drowsed against Ewan’s sleeve, and woke and looked out, they were past Auchinblae going down into the Glen of Drumtochty, here no snow fell, far in the lift Drumtochty rose with its firs going climbing to the racing clouds. She said Remember that day there, Ewan? and told him to be careful, he’d nearly turned the car in a ditch, kissing her, he laughed, he’d remembered as well, something like a shadow went over his face, not from it, and a moment she saw again the shamed hurt boy whom she’d loved, still loved, deeper and madder and worse than ever.

The landlady said God be here, they’d expected no visitors on New Year’s Eve, but they both were welcome. If they’d wait a while she’d stir up those sweir meikle bitches the maids and see that a room was set in order. Och, she minded the two of them fine back in May and she’d known another thing though she’d never letten on—that the two of them had been on their honeymoon. Wasn’t that true?

Ellen said it was, but the landlady was looking at Ewan, hardly heard, she said he’d take a bit dram with her?—and his good lady too, maybe?

So they sat and had their dram, all three, and the landlady and Ewan were at it in a minute, gossip that somehow left Ellen out, though she didn’t know how, she was just as interested in floods and storms and hens and chickens and farm boys as Ewan was (and once a lot more). But as always with the working people everywhere, however she dreamed of justice for them, flamed in anger against their wrongs, something like a wall of glass came down cutting her off from their real beliefs, the meanings in tones and intonation, the secret that made them bearable as individuals. But Ewan had now the soap-box trick of pretending to be all things to all kinds of keelies—That was damn mean and wasn’t true, there was no pretence, he WAS all things—sometimes, frighteningly, it seemed to her that he was the keelies, all of them, himself.