“Och ay, and it would give the Inverness Courier something to write about for a change,” said James.

Carrie saw with pleasure that Chester liked her young lawyer, and she slipped away to extract a picnic lunch for two from Toker.

She and Alan ate it together up at the Pass of Ballochy, looking down from a green knoll upon the silver stretch of Loch Hoch and over the wide level of Strathdun. They talked of the Scottish rebirth of which the Keep of Knocknacolly was to be the centre; they talked of the accident of Carrie’s walking up Glenbristle that day not yet quite three weeks ago; they talked of Carrie’s progress in Gaelic.

“I found out a strange thing the other day. Do you know what roid means? R-O-I-D.”

Carrie said she had no idea.

“I looked up roid in my dictionary.”

“Oh, you did? R-O-I-D without an E, you said?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder what made you look up such a word?”

“It just came into my head.”

“I see. And what does it mean?”

“That’s the extraordinary thing. It means ‘bog-myrtle.’”

A slow blush flowed into the poet’s face and to shake off his embarrassment he ran down the slope to gather some sprigs of a miniature shrub that was growing in profusion in the moist ground below.

“Crush the leaves. They smell very sweet.”

“Alan, they smell delicious.”

“Do you remember that poem of mine, Peaty Water?”

“I certainly do.”

“I’ve added to it slightly. This is how it goes now.

“The sweet breath of bog-myrtle

Blows on the wind,

And green grow they still,

The leaves of the bog-myrtle.

But the heather,

The fading heather,

Is spread like the robe of a dead king Upon my country,

Upon my dying country.

I do not lament, therefore, but laugh

When down through the stale dead purple

Dances the peaty water,

Warm with the sharp sun of the high tops,

Prickt by the sun of the high tops,

The prattling peaty dark-brown water,

The warm dark-brown water of life

Whose sweet breath blows on the wind,

Bringing bog-myrtle.”

“Yes, you certainly have made it very much clearer now. I’m wondering how I ever thought the water of life was the S.B.A.,” Carrie murmured half to herself. “We’ll go on soon, will we, and explore around Loch Hoch?”

Not long before Carrie and Alan reached the loch Hector MacDonald had decided that the day must be redeemed from failure by landing a bigger catch than any its waters could provide. He and Myrtle had been rowed up and down by a gillie for four hours without persuading a single fish to pay the slightest attention to Redwinged Biffers, Blue Spankers, Zigzag Nonpareils or Yellow Munks. It was after three o’clock, and Hector had had to give up all hope of catching the trout he had promised to cook for Myrtle’s lunch.