“Did you observe,” he added, “the graven images that your uncle has set up?... Where is the man the noo?”
“He is gone to Oban,” I said.
He sprang up and thrust the stocking and needles into his sporran.
“To Oban!” He stood a moment in some deep reflection. “There will be ships out of Oban.” Then he put another question to me:
“What did auld Andrew say about it?”
“That my uncle was gone to Oban,” I answered, “and had set no time for his return.”
He looked at me queerly for a moment, towering above me in the deep heather.
“Do you think, my lad, that your uncle could be setting out for heathen parts to learn the witch words for his hell business in the boathouse?”
The suggestion startled me. The thing was not beyond all possibility.
But I felt that I had come to the end of this examination. I was not going to be questioned further like a small boy overtaken on the road I had answered a good many questions and I determined to ask one.