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DISTURBED REVERIES 215 Minor evils, however, would probably irritate us even in that case. A minor irritation was not want-ing to me that morning. It took the shape of poor innocent Scotty, who, whenever I was in the middle of some dialogue with myself or with nature, was sure to interrupt it with some irrelevant observation. When I was saturating my mind at one place with the romance of a hanging pine-wood, he turned round in his saddle and said this to me : ' Once in a wood like that I shoot with a English gentleman. He was captain of English ship, and I there for inter-preter. That was in Karamania. In Karamania are many wild pig.' This is a mere Liebig's extract of a good five minutes' discourse which buzzed round my ears like a bluebottle, and which I had not the cruelty to kill. In another place we came to a roofless chapel—a little plaintive ruin still containing an altar. I was pausing to look at it when Scotty, seizing the opportunity, pointed / in the direction of the sea and said, ' There, sir, are many tortoise, but these fellows here are stupid ; they never make no soup of him.' Tortoise I saw was Scotty's version of turtle. For a moment a vision of green fat and Madeira crossed my mind like a swallow : I then dismounted and examined the broken walls. On the far side of them some young trees, sprouting on the brink of a precipice, made a grey cloud of foliage ; below was a deep valley with reeds and a stream at the bottom of it ; and not a quarter of a mile beyond, glimmering amongst orchards and cypresses, were the

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