"You'll no can miss it," said Mr. Scollay.
"It's the big house. Just keep along the road and you'll see it
afore you."
So off I set through this unknown isle, still hatless and buttoned
up in my oilskin, but smoking a peculiarly soothing pipe and
thoroughly enjoying my adventure. The prospect of an ally ahead was
delightfully cheering.
"Provided Mr. Rendall isn't an utter ass, we ought to have these fellows
sitting!" I said to myself.
V
THE DOCTOR'S HOUSE
The rough road from the shore kept gently mounting and I soon stood high
enough to get a very good general idea of the island of Ransay. It was a
green, low-lying, undulating fragment of the world, set that morning in
a sea of sapphire blue, open to the horizon on the one hand and strewn
with sister isles on the other. The Scollay's house stood near the
northwest end, and beyond it there seemed to be little save sea-turf and
rocks, but in the direction I was walking one small green farm followed
another for what I guessed to be four or five miles, and from side to
side perhaps a couple of miles or less. There was only one rise in the
land that could be called a hill, and that only by courtesy; elsewhere
nothing but green undulations with a small reedy loch or two tucked away
in their gentle folds.
Far to the southward, on other isles, higher hills, brown and blue, broke
the horizon, but apart from these one saw nothing but a green and blue
plain lying beneath an immensity of white and blue sky.
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