The last habitable cottage before you come to the lighthouse at Ardnamurchan, the most westerly point on the Scottish mainland if not the whole of the ancient island of Britain, used to nestle to the southern side of an old, square tower. This tower may have once been a fortified block-house, such as one sees throughout the wilder parts of Scotland, where clan once fought against clan down through the years, until King fought against King for the final time and there were no more clans. Time, or maybe the actions of a crofter taking away the squared stones from its highest courses to build the cottage which had long abutted it, had reduced the old tower in height, but its presence had given the croft itself a grander aspect than many another shielding nestling in crooks of the hills on the road to Acharacle. It stood proud upon a promontory, and looked out upon the sunset, the Isles, and over the vast, old Atlantic Ocean, with its profound, unknowable secrets.
For some time the cottage stood empty, after the last crofter had rolled his meagre belongings into his plaid, and tearfully set out on the road to Glasgow and beyond. But at last it was bruited about that it was taken, and by people somewhat approaching gentry, even. Alasdair and Eilidh MacAskill, brother and sister, bachelor and spinster, had made an offer to the laird's man of business, and it had been accepted. They were to move into it at the end of the summer, but first the keys had been sent to Rab MacRae the joiner and handyman, who lived by the slipway of the Tobermory ferry. He was to enter the house, and work to the strict plans given him by the factor, to make it habitable for townsfolk. Rab worked with a will, indeed, but there was something, he said later, which made him unwilling to stay beyond sunset, and to be well gone from the house before the shadow of the old tower made a patch of darkness upon the road home. Old houses, long unoccupied, have that effect on simple folk, and the dour, old minister at the grey kirk chided Rab, and bade him attend to his prayers rather than superstitious fancy.
It was Rab himself who eventually conveyed the brother and sister from the ferry to their new house. They had come by train to Oban, then had taken a scenic route along the eastern coast of the Isle of Mull, before crossing the sound again to Ardnamurchan. They were a sere couple, bringing few possessions with them, except for a heavy trunk which Alasdair guarded.
"My books," he said – and little else – by way of explanation.
It gradually came to be known that Alasdair had been a dealer in antiquarian books, having run a small shop in Fort William. A keen eye, a talent for driving a hard bargain, and an unwillingness to spend his money on "fripperies", had enabled him to retire in middle age, to buy a retreat, and to take his only relative, his sister, into retirement with him.
For a while they were looked up to, for they were staid as well as sere, and seemed to embody those stoic, Presbyterian virtues that once were respected in the far west of Scotland. But soon folk's looks darkened. For all their staidness, they never appeared at the kirk, and once, when asked about this, Alasdair had curled his lip in downright scorn. What is more, there were rumours of correspondence with a man of dubious and unsavoury reputation who lived on the shores of Loch Ness, and Alasdair's not infrequent absences were thought to be trips up that way. He returned often red-eyed and haggard from these journeys. If anyone did venture up the road to their cottage when daylight was failing, there were stories of strange lights' being seen along the walls and through the ancient musket-slits of the tower.
Apart from Alasdair's times away, the brother and sister hardly seemed to venture forth from their home. Rab delivered their provisions in a cart. The sister, Eilidh, was more civil, and better regarded than her brother. She was often to be seen, by such people who did go by there, sitting at the door of the cottage on a fine day, looking at the low sunlight redden the sea, or at the window on a day less clement, watching the play of the breakers and the rolling of the clouds.
The dour minister himself braved that road on his pony, picking a day when Alasdair was absent, and found Eilidh to be "an hospitable woman, for all her disregard of the Sabbath". He had accepted a cup of tea, and a sit in a comfortable armchair for a while, in the pleasant if largely unlit sitting room of the cottage.
"I see you have many books," he mentioned, nodding over to a bookshelf, clearly of Rab's handiwork. "Though not the Word of God, I notice."
"My brother's," said Eilidh, by way of the briefest explanation. "And no, I do not believe he has a Bible amongst them. Perhaps that is a pity."
The last remark did warm the granite of the minister's heart a little towards the sister, imagining her to be, in some way, a prisoner of her brother's heathenish reclusion. He took an opportunity, while Eilidh took his emptied teacup into the kitchen, of standing and peering more closely at the books. Now, narrow and strait he may have been, but the minister was not an ignorant man, having been in Edinburgh at the University in his youth. The first book his eyes lit upon gave him pause. Its bindings were clearly late seventeenth century, and unless he was mistaken it was an unknown work on Alchemy by Isaac Newton. Quite a find, if a little suspect! There was more disquieting stuff further along the shelf. The minister recognised the works of Albertus Magnus, to begin with, and amongst some tomes whose spines were worn beyond interpreting the once-gilt lettering on them, he saw with a start Von Junzt's "Unaussprechlichen Kulten", and – oh horror – an early Latin translation of the dreaded "Necronomicon" of the mad arab Abdul Alhazred. He was frowning darkly when Eilidh re-entered the room.
"Woman," he said, all courtesy and friendliness gone. "Do you read these things?"
"No, indeed," she said, and he relaxed a little. "Since I was a child my favourite reading has been only fairy tales. I do not understand Alasdair sometimes, and his love for those dusty volumes. I have seen some of them with their pages open, and have seen his notes in the margins, and notes which must have been made a long time ago in hands which are beyond deciphering. And indeed I worry about the way he sometimes commits things from them to memory, and circles the cottage and the tower chanting them. He comes indoors so tired, as if he has been carrying some great burden. Often I fancy I hear his chanting answered, but then I think – no, a seagull, the wind perhaps."
"Lassie," said the minister, more softened than he could have thought possible. "I fear that your brother is beyond salvation. But yourself – oh, if you would only fall to your prayers!"
The minister left the cottage, remembering, as his pony trotted down the loaning, the wan smile and the far-away look that Eilidh had when he spoke of her prayers. It was no more than half a mile along the road that he encountered Rab's cart coming in the opposite direction. Rab was driving, uneasy at having Alasdair sitting beside him. When the latter saw the minister his face became red with fury. His scowl was full of hatred, and he tugged at Rab's sleeve, urging the poor jack-of-all-trades to whip up his horse. Later Rab told whomever would listen, in his precise, Highland English:
