‘It was tough on the Macdonalds, too.’

‘I was thinking in terms of Greek drama.’

‘Hm,’ said the Crew.

I looked around the road, for this tendency to collapse a discussion in sudden laughter was becoming an alarming manifestation of our new freedom. Two or three boy scouts on pushbikes did pull up—and told us that Loch Awe station was perhaps three to four miles farther on. After we had walked many miles a bus overtook us, and, as we sank back in our soft seats, for it was a magnificent bus, the Crew smiled. ‘I always liked riding in a bus,’ she said. ‘This one feels like a chariot.’

‘A chariot was a hard racketing—’

‘Still, it feels like a chariot.’

It must be some rightness in a thing that makes one laugh at the wrong moment.

‘Ssh!’ she said. ‘They’ll think you’re English.’

For she can be quite merciless when she gets you going.

But at Loch Awe station, she merely smiled when I told her of the church the antiquary had described to me. I was rather hazy about it, it is true, but I had the distinct impression of a church built of stones carried by chiefs. Perhaps for their sins? A remarkable thought, anyway, and when I began haltingly to interrogate a railway man, he at once said:

‘The church? See that red shed? Well, it’s beyond that. Enough time? If you hurry,’

‘Good-bye,’ said the Crew.

It was three times as far as it looked, and when I arrived I knew it must be the wrong church, for this was a large modern affair in grey granite. And when I got down to it, the doors were locked. I found two Englishmen round the back, dodging flying buttresses, looking for any opening.

‘Isn’t this truly Scotch?’ said one.

‘Every blessed door locked!’ said the other, exasperated.

Silently, if none the less heartily and sincerely, I agreed with them. When suddenly a woman appeared, with a tall conical black hat, a slight stoop, and a bunch of keys. We followed her silently in at the main door. She had a quiet gentle voice. She knew everything. And had silence as a pure gift.

It was a remarkable church interior, containing so much extraordinary detail that I dare hardly be sure of describing one item correctly, for I have deliberately made no effort to find out more about it. There was an effigy of Bruce, the face and hands being of alabaster and the rest of wood. In front of him a chest, containing one of his bones, and to his left a great bell from one of the lighthouses of our western ocean. There were astragals from a window of the old church in Iona; coats of arms of many clans; something here from Edinburgh and there from India; cloisters of a kind, too, with upended gridirons used long ago to defeat the body snatchers. And a hundred other astonishing things.

The large windows and the grey granite filled the interior with light, so that it felt like a church on an immense balcony. Yet despite its architectural peculiarities (it must have had some feature of every mode) and its conglomerate interior, it achieved a unity that affected the two English critics, for one remarked softly to the other, ‘When I turned round there I expected to see the high altar.’ While all he saw was a bare table.