They wandered about the little garden and into the little cottage, which all looked like the picture of a lovely memory. Which perhaps it was. For there was no woman now in that place.

Then I thought I should go and ask him about anchorages farther up the loch, and he told me there were a few, particularly one or two near the head of the loch where men went to fish.

‘Fish for what?’ I asked.

‘Trout,’ he answered.

‘The landlords, you mean?’

‘No, anyone. The landlords had tried to stop it—but had failed. It’s the sea.’

‘It’s paradise,’ I murmured.

Free fishing! The times were looking up. The landlords were growing wings. How pleasant and novel an exercise to write a sonnet in praise of landlords—by way of change from the miserable habit of girding at them or of stumbling over the ruins they had so lavishly scattered about the Highlands! We had trout rods and tackle with us. This very night, when the piper had finished, I should write the first sonnet in praise of landlords. And even if they had tried to stop folk fishing, still one could overlook a little thing like that.

So I bundled various parcels about my body, and, picking up the petrol tin of paraffin, led on, the Crew bringing up the rear with milk and eggs. I had the honey.

We had still about three miles before us, and we were a trifle sticky at the shoulder, before we saw our boat through the birches and the dinghy over the bracken. Mutely waiting for us in the quiet bay.

‘There they are!’ cried the Crew, and saluted with the eggs. The petrol tin rumbled response like a tom-tom. ‘Isn’t it lovely getting back to our own place?’

And behold! lying on a seat of the dinghy, a letter! A white envelope superscribed:

‘To the occupier of the Launch.’

An invitation, probably by a landlord, to dinner! We did not want an invitation by anyone to dinner, however . . . I tore open the envelope, withdrew a sheet of paper, and read:

‘————House,
Taynuilt, Argyllshire
July 27th 1937

‘As [the Landlord’s] unwelcome guests have not had the courtesy to call upon him, they are now compelled to do so as the oars are at the House.

‘The nuisance of bathing in front of the house having been added, the launch and the crew will be so good as to remove themselves forthwith.’

I was trying to make head or tail of this invitation, when the Crew said:

‘The oars are gone.’

And they were gone—including the broken third oar which we used as a roller.

But who on earth was this Landlord? And where his House? It was a pretty esoteric sort of practical joke. I read the note a third time, and the spirit beneath the phrasing came up and hit me.

I now remembered having once seen a large house standing back from the sea. But before the occupants of that house could see us they would have to walk a considerable distance! I Then the Crew remembered the woman and children who, the day before, had passed along the shore and stared at our boat. We had assumed no more than the usual and natural curiosity.