THE DARKNESS AND THE TIDE

“What time o’ day is it?” My interrogator was an old man I met the other evening in a loaney running down from the back of Lochros to the sands of Lochros Beag Bay, near where the old fish-pass used to be. I looked at my watch, and told him it was five-and-twenty past seven. “Oh,” said he, “is it so much as that? The darkness and the tide’ll soon be coming in, then.”