It was such a lovely stretch of water, too.

‘Would you like to try?’ asked the Crew.

‘See these cairns—on the other side. They must be the graves of the dead.’

‘You don’t sound very reverent.’

‘But the bridge that Campbell broke behind him—is manifestly still broken, so we can’t go over. Shall we go on?’

‘Yes. We’ll get the train back. Look, there’s a railway house on the line. They’ll tell you about the cave.’

I climbed the embankment and came on a small platform and one or two houses and the usual tall signal box, at a window of which I saw a man.

When he had told me I could not get a ticket, I asked him about the cave.

He laughed. ‘Who was tellin’ ye?’ And when I had spoken, he laughed again. ‘That’s his stock in trade! We’ve searched for that cave whole Sundays—and haven’t found it yet.’ The irreverent Glasgow voice was infectious. ‘I don’t believe the damned cave is in it! Ye’ll catch a train at Cruachan Falls, if ye step out.’

I joined the Crew, feeling reassured and modern again. ‘We have to step out for Cruachan Falls.’

But the small railway station at Cruachan Falls looked dilapidated and was completely deserted. There wasn’t even a railway bill stuck up. Had the modern failed us, too? We hunted round about and shouted. Echoes, only.

So we resigned ourselves to the beauty of the Falls and presently threw off the grip that time had been fixing on us again, ate wild raspberries, and the Crew found some flowers that pleased her.

‘I read a verse—by Barbour, I think it was—describing this Pass,’ said the Crew. ‘And somehow the old Scots words looked exactly like this place. He first of all tells you that it was an evil place so straight and narrow that two men couldn’t ride together.’

Then (for she looked up the words later):

The nethir half was perelous;
For a schoir crag, bye and hyduous,
Raucht till the se, doun fra the pas.
On the owthir half ane montane was
So cumrous and ek so stay,
That it was hard to pas that way.

‘That would be about Bruce’s fight here?’

‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘But I don’t remember much about it. All these chiefs mix me up. He won anyway and went on to Dunstaffnage and put a garrison there.’

‘In the Wallace affair, I must say Lochow and his Campbells did right nobly. If they hadn’t gone political so early, the Campbells might have been a great crowd.’

‘And how is Glencoe explained?’

‘No one can explain it. It’s there like fate, a tragic play of immortal treachery. Yet think—one can parallel it with hundreds of instances of treachery from other countries. But in these countries—Greece excepted—any individual instance of treachery seldom attained tragic dignity. Why?’

‘Go on.’

‘I know it’s obvious. Treachery does not sear the mind of a folk for centuries—unless that mind had nobility for to sear. The Campbells had been playing with politicians greater than themselves, and so were inevitably herded into being the figures of awful destiny. Which, in a sense, was tough on the Campbells.’