‘To-day and every day. There’s not a moment of our time will ever be free again. To-morrow’s food, every day’s danger—where will it end?’

I looked drearily across the blue waters of the loch. I felt her hand touch mine timidly.

‘Don’t pay any attention to me,’ I bade her.

‘I think we’ll catch one of the goats that are running wild on the Farrow,’ she said with forced cheerfulness. ‘Like Robinson Crusoe, you know. Can’t you make rennet for cheese from the stomachs of young rabbits, Hugh?’

‘Yes, or lambs while they’re very young, or deer calves, or any beast while it’s being suckled by its mother.’

‘There you are!’ she continued. ‘We’ll have milk and cheese and white, white butter. Then we’ll dig a bit of ground and plant potatoes—’

‘Where is the seed coming from?’ I asked ironically.

‘Couldn’t we get potatoes and lots of things from—from round about?’

‘Where?’ I cried. ‘Oh, there’s an easier way, the way we’ll go.’

‘What way is that, Hugh?’ she asked.

‘The way of our fathers, raiding and stealing, thieving like our ancestors.’

‘It’d be better for us to die, Hugh.’

‘That’s easy too.’

‘Hugh!’ she cried. ‘Why are you like this to-day?’

‘I don’t know, Terry. Oh Christ, I can’t see, it’s dark and hopeless every way I turn.’

‘We’ll go out to the hill for meat to-morrow,’ she said simply. ‘I think it’ll do us good. We’ve been too idle lately, Hugh. I often notice,’ she went on in earnest tones, ‘we get like this, downcast and hopeless, when we have nothing to occupy us. You are always happier after a hard day on the hill, Hugh.’

‘What’s the benefit of feeling better for a few hours when it’s worse afterwards?’ I exclaimed.

‘That’s nonsense, Hugh, and besides, we need meat. What are you seeing?’ she asked sharply.

‘Sheep,’ I answered. ‘We can eat mutton now, Terry, and have tallow candles to light us, and skins to keep us warm.’

‘We’re not sheep-stealers yet, Hugh,’ she said.

‘There’s no stealing when there’s no owner,’ I replied.

‘No owner! What do you mean?’

‘Why are the sheep still here, all scattered everyway, and their lambs with them that should have been weaned and sold six weeks ago? Have you seen a shepherd, or heard his dogs? Why is there wool in tufts on every low branch of this wood? If there were owners still, would the sheep be out here now, with their lambs, and some not even clipped?’

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.

‘Why should we try to blind ourselves—the worst we imagined isn’t so bad as the things that have happened there! there! there!’ I spread my arms wildly to the places beyond our country where men used to live.