The man was taken aback. ‘Lot of work here. Depends on the season, but sowing, harvesting…the animals of course, to feed, slaughter, take em out, bring em in. Wife here does the lessons with the boy. Get water, get…’

‘So you attend to your Lord when you find the time?’ He shook his head.

The man looked furious but did not reply. The boy had gone to his mother and she was embracing him with one arm, holding the infant with the other. Her ravaged face bore misery and compliance in equal measure. And perhaps, I thought, just a tinge of scepticism. Hers was a life to be endured, nothing more.

‘I will need to consider this,’ Gideon continued. ‘I am close to a resolution on the matter, but it requires thought.’ And without another word he got up and walked out, leaving Munro and me at the table with the embarrassed family. Nobody spoke, and at length the baby began to cry. I excused myself and went outside to sit on the doorstep.

The doctor had walked away from the house, over to the near edge of the field, and was squatted on his haunches among the stubble of the winter crop. I watched him pick at the straws and hold a stem up to the light, squinting at it. He rubbed his fingertips in the earth, lowered his head in thought, then stood up.

He did not utter a word as he passed me in the doorway, but gave me a tiny smile.

‘Very well,’ he said loudly as he entered the room. The baby was screaming now. The family looked up hopefully; the mother fumbled under her shawl and fed a breast to the infant, silencing the racket. The boy was on another chair, picking at sores on his hands.

‘The problem here,’ Gideon began, sighing deeply, ‘is impiety.’ He allowed the wave of shock to pass through the room.

‘Sir, have you failed in your fidelity to your wife?’

The man did not wither under his searching gaze, but stood taller in anger. ‘Never once!’ he cried.

‘Other women on the island?’

‘No!’

‘You sure?’

‘I tell you again, never!’

‘You ever…’ He looked sidelong now. ‘Have you ever been tempted by the stock?’

The allegation rocked him back as if the doctor had hurled a heavy object rather than a slur.

‘What sort of man do ye take me for, sir? In front of my wife? And child, you ask this!’

The good humour never left the doctor’s face. ‘So not in body, perhaps,’ he said. ‘But your thoughts, sir, they have been impure at times, have they not?’

The man spluttered with indignation. ‘I cannae see how this leads to burning sores and fitting and mad dreams!’ He was so outraged that making an ‘f ’ sound had caused him to spittle.