Also I shall give you this."
I held up a new half crown and he laughed so joyfully that I began to
have a faint hope he might prove of some use after all.
And yet when I had left him and resumed my walk back to the Rendalls'
house, my spirits were not very high. As an ally Jock did not impress me
with a feeling of great confidence, while his failure to recognise my
description of the oil-skinned man depressed me unreasonably. I told
myself that the opinion of the parish idiot on the subject of strangers
was of small value. Besides, quite likely the oilskinned man would not be
a stranger to the people in the neighbourhood. They might know him
familiarly as a prosperous farmer or a hardy fisherman--or as their own
doctor or their doctor's guest, or--no, he could not be their laird for
Mr. Rendall was too tall. In short my talk with Jock had proved nothing
one way or the other.
And yet my whole failure to come upon any trace of the gang in spite of
all my ingenuity did set me thinking. Could it possibly be that my entire
adventure had been an hallucination? I confessed frankly to myself that I
have a pretty lively imagination, and I recalled vividly how I had
almost collapsed on my way to the Scollays under the strain of an intense
reaction, how my brain had whirled, and how I peopled the farm kitchen
with full thrice the number of persons actually assembled.
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