Castle Gay - MVK World

'Mr Craw's Open Letter to the President of the U.S.A.' Will nobody give
the body a flea in his ear? … I could write a book about Craw. He's perpetually
denouncing, but always with a hopeful smirk. I've discovered
his formula. 'This is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is
a necessary evil.' He wants to be half tonic and half sedative, but for me
he's just a plain emetic."
Dougal waved the cuttings like a flag.
"The man is impregnable, for he never reads any paper but his own,
and he has himself guarded like a gun-factory. But I've a notion that
some day I'll get him face to face. Some day I'll have the chance of telling
him just what I think of him, and what every honest man—"
Jaikie by a dexterous twitch got possession of the cuttings, crumpled
them into a ball, dropped it in a patch of peat, and ground it down with
his heel.
"What's that you've done?" Dougal cried angrily. "You've spoiled my
Craw collection."
"Better that than spoiling our holiday. Look here, Dougal, my lad. For
a week you've got to put Craw and all his works out of your head. We
are back in an older and pleasanter world, and I won't have it wrecked
by your filthy journalism… ."
For the better part of five minutes there was a rough-and-tumble on
the green moor-road, from which Jaikie ultimately escaped and fled.
When peace was made the two found themselves at a gate in a dry-stone
dyke.
"Thank God," said Dougal. "Here is the Back House at last. I want my
tea."
Their track led them into a little yard behind the cottage, and they
made their way to the front, where the slender highway which ascended
the valley of the Garroch came to an end in a space of hill gravel before
the door. The house was something more than a cottage, for fifty years
ago it had been the residence of a prosperous sheep-farmer, before the
fashion of "led" farms had spread over the upland glens. It was of two
storeys and had a little wing at right angles, the corner between being
filled with a huge bush of white roses. The roof was slated, the granite
walls had been newly whitewashed, and were painted with the last glories
of the tropæolum. A grove of scarlet-berried rowans flanked one end,
beyond which lay the walled garden of potatoes and gooseberry bushes,
varied with golden-rod and late-flowering phloxes. At the other end
were the thatched outhouses and the walls of a sheepfold, where the apparatus
for boiling tar rose like a miniature gallows above the dipping-
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