Cold, Lone and Still Read Online Free PDF

dined.
    ‘The Way is long,’ said the gypsy.
    ‘ “The wind was cold,
    The minstrel was infirm and old,” ’
    I quoted, and gave another slight touch to Hera’s arm.
    ‘You keep to The Way,’ said the gypsy, ignoring me. ‘It may be long, but there is danger if you stray. Buy a flower and a bit of green fern, lady. Green is a lucky colour for you. Buy a bit of rowan for the white soul of you. Come autumn, there will be berries red as pigeons’ blood, but the flower of the rowan, that’s white as milk, as pure as your heart, my lady.’
    ‘All right,’ said Hera. She picked a spray of rowan out of the gypsy’s basket and gave the old woman a fifty pence coin. ‘Now tell me why I’m to mind how I go. Go where?’
    ‘Come you apart from your gentleman.’
    I was not very keen on this, but Hera motioned me to stay where I was. The gypsy took her aside far enough for me to be out of earshot. The conference was not a very long one. Hera came back to me with a couple of paper flowers as well as the spray of rowan for which she had paid such a ridiculously exorbitant price, but she refused to disclose any details of the conversation.
    ‘It’s all a lot of nonsense, I expect,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and look at the old canal.’
    I saw that it would be useless for a time to ask any questions, but I guessed that she would come out with something later on. I spent a comfortable night, although I had no luck, as I say, with the sleeping arrangements because I had booked us in separately again at Hera’s insistence. I hoped she now regretted this as much as I did, but, short of telling them at the desk that we had got married since I had made the booking, there was nothing to be done about it.
    We breakfasted at eight next day and went back to join The Way, but midway through the stop we made for our elevenses Hera came up with one of those bright ideas which might seem all right at the time, but end in disaster later.
    ‘You’ve got maps, haven’t you?’ she said.
    ‘Sure. Why?’ I asked, scenting danger.
    ‘When we get to Crianlarich we’ll study the map,’ said the temptress. ‘There might be a short cut we could take. So long as we don’t use public transport, nothing was said about having to keep strictly to The Way, was it?’
    ‘No. but I didn’t accept any bets and one doesn’t take short cuts in this sort of country unless one is a fool or has been born and brought up here.’
    ‘Oh, we won’t take a short cut unless it’s marked on the map,’ she said.
    ‘Well, it won’t be. The Way would follow it if it were.’
    ‘We’ll see,’ she said. Again, I did not argue. There were nearly seven miles to cover before we reached Crianlarich and I thought she would have forgotten about short cuts by the time we got there.
    From Inverarnan to Crianlarich we were in Glen Falloch and had left Loch Lomond behind. We finished on the old military road constructed, I suppose, by Wade, who opened up parts of the Highlands in this way to assist in what was known as their pacification. This meant he had to move his troops about to get to the trouble spots during and after the Jacobite risings.
    It was when we had left the river we had been following and were getting near our destination that we caught up with the first of Carbridge’s off-loadings. These were Perth and the students. One could not call them stragglers, since they had fallen behind only in order to get on with the job they had come to do. They were all busy with notebooks, maps, chisels and their little geological hammers and told us that they were having a great time and had booked beds at the youth hostel in Crianlarich, where they hoped to see us again.
    We gave them our good wishes and asked how far ahead the rest of the party would be. It turned out that they had all booked in at the hostel, but Carbridge might have decided to push on towards Tyndrum without stopping in Crianlarich.
    ‘He must be mad,’ said Hera. ‘The hostel