For a few minutes he stood over the open trunk. A drop of wax spilled from his candle and splashed on to the sleeve of the pelisse. At one time, not very long ago, he would have cursed himself for such carelessness; now he simply watched it cool and whiten. Then he swung down the lid, blew out the candle and went to the window, leaned his forehead against the cold glass, shut his eyes.

That night he dreamed again of the Polish lancers in the snow, the dozen or so on the slope beneath the crown of the hill where they had fallen charging a Spanish artillery position. Dead horses too, their corpses mounted by crows that would not scare. Mountains soft as lace in the white light of the dusk. The crows lifting like cinders, hovering, then settling again . . .

He had had this dream five or six times since his return. It had no variation, no narrative beyond the barest, was nothing but a picture of nothing, of absence, nullity. But something else must have come to him in his sleep that night, something more useful, for when he woke, an hour or so after dawn, it seemed to him he knew exactly what he was about to do, and by the time Nell came up with his breakfast, he had, using the paper and ink in Lovall’s case, almost finished a letter to his sister Lucy. It was his third attempt, the first saying things he had no right to burden her with, the next brief to the point of oddness. Finally, having burned the others, he wrote:

Dearest Lucy,


You must forgive me for not having written to you sooner and so, I fear, been the cause of unnecessary anxiety. I returned from Spain in February. You will have read by now something of what happened there. I was fit for nothing when I got home and do not know how I would have managed without Nell to nurse me. I am over the worst of it now but have decided, for the sake of my health, to make a small journey—a convalescent’s tour—and have settled upon the Scottish islands, believing their remoteness, the grandeur of their scenery, will work a good change in me and make me ready for the world again. I have had thoughts on music too, and mean to try to collect some of the old songs of the islands and so make a little coda or addendum to Father’s books. That, at least, is my scheme. I hope you will not think it a bad or an idle one. I hoped you might ask William if he has any ship on his books bound for northern ports. Glasgow? Aberdeen? (I cannot find a good map in the house but William will know what is best.) I will need very little in the way of comforts and am anxious to start as soon as is practicable.