The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

Through Darkest Inverness-shire, 675
Did I know Swan ? he resumed. Who is Swan ? said I,
by way of a preliminary to a distinct reply. Not to know
Swan, not to be a gaffer or an office hand, was apparently
a conjunction of evils which were having a bad effect on the
man. But, I added, a brilliant idea striking me, I know
Macdougall. Then, he retorted, with some appearance of
natural sequence, you'd better try Swan's. " Swan's " I
learned, on further enquiry, to be the Telegraph Office,
about half a mile down the track. This fact of the
Telegraph Office was reassuring, and I reached it without
delay. It was a black felted square box, situated
unpicturesquely in the middle of a morass. I waded near
it and found Swan himself smoking a pipe at his door. He
C}-ed me all over very uncomplacently, I thought, and to
my overtures with regard to the state of the weather and of
his own immediate surroundings, he did not respond with
much good feeling.
I put my case to Swan very clearly, dwelt on the fact
that Macdougall had proved a broken reed, by going away
long since, and the " five o'clock" quenched flax by not being
there at all, adding, by way of peroration, " was I to be left
here to decay in barren bog ? "
Swan made no \erbal response, but his look indicated
plainl}' that for the purposes of decay, it might as well be
done in barren bog as anywhere else. He then turned in to
one of his telegraph instruments, and began operating very
vigorously.
I waited patiently until he had finished. He then said
laconically, " The'll be an engine here in half an hour.'
The sun was still setting, the clouds were still creeping
lower, and the surroundings were more dismal than ever,
but I could, on hearing this statement, have taken Swan to
my breast—have taken Swan's neck in my arms— I looked
on him with such feelings of admiration.
I had contracted the uncommon habit of carrying with
me on excursions like this a life-saving apparatus, in the
shape of a little flask. With commendable forethought I