‘There’s not much goes past them,’ said my friend.

‘Can you tell me the name of any book dealing with all this history about Loch Etive?’

‘Not any one book I can think of. But there’s a book dealing with the Deirdre period you spoke of, a very fine and scholarly book it is, called Loch Etive and the Sons of Usnach, by Angus Smith. You should read that, if you want to get some idea of the culture that should have come out of our own past. It deals with every old corner around the loch.’

‘Very few folk,’ I said, having made a note of the book, ‘know about Deirdre—apart from the modern song. You know the song?’

‘Yes, I have heard it. What you say about folk not knowing is true. The clever ones go to college and learn about the Hebrews and the Greeks. And very wonderful people they were, too. Very.’

I felt the wonder in his pause.

‘About the song—yes, I have heard it,’ he resumed. ‘Though I wonder if the verse about Glendaruel [old Glendaruadh] refers quite to the place Deirdre was thinking of. Up the loch, there, is a place called Dail or Dal. There is a glen behind it with the colour ruadh on the hillside, sort of reddish-brown. It is a fairly common termination. For example, there is a hill on the right before you come to the head of the loch called Stob an Duine Ruaidh—the Stob of the reddish man. So why not at Dail—Glen-Dal-ruadh? Deirdre’s garden is about there. However, that’s just an idea, for Glendaruel is away in Cowal.’

This suggestion so deeply interested me that I realised, with a shock, how antiquarianism might take hold of a man. Historic places as such had never really had any deep appeal for me, whatever I may have pretended. Yet here I was promising I should even hunt out the cave where Campbell cut off Makfadyan’s head and presented it to Wallace—a story I had not hitherto even heard of!

‘I think a few real long walks would do us good,’ said the Crew, game for the next thing that might happen, as I pulled the dinghy home, taking advantage of every eddy by the shore, for the tide was against us. ‘And there—our old friend chorda filum—to tell us how the current runs!’

‘And there—look!’ I said.

A shapely young woman poised on a boulder in a bathing dress, and a young man taking her photograph. Their boat was drawn up beside them.

‘The mystery is solved,’ I suggested, ‘of the bathers who committed the “nuisance”.’

‘If only they knew how they were trespassing on that shore now!’ said the Crew.

‘Should I tell them?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Might be a pity to introduce the serpent into their idyll.’

‘True,’ said the Crew. ‘Besides, they might go and bathe yonder again.’

The weather continued lovely during all our stay in Loch Etive. Now and then, I grudged not being at sea, for this was the cruising weather we had dreamed of, and I had hankerings after the Gulf of Coirebhreacain. But we had promised the Mate to wait for him here. And if we went to sea, who could forecast where we should heave to, or for how long?