They found the lobster boat two days later. A trawler picked her up, empty and abandoned about eight miles northeast of Laerg. Nobody doubted what had happened. And in reporting it there was no reference to my brother. It was Major George Braddock who was dead, and I think it was the story I told them of what had really happened in North Africa that caused the various officers concerned, right up to the DRA, to be so frank in their answers to my questions. And now it is March again here on Laerg, the winter over and the birds back, my solitary vigil almost ended. Tomorrow the boat comes to take me back to Rodil. I finished writing my brother’s story almost a week ago. Every day since then I have been out painting, chiefly on Keava. And sitting up there all alone, the sun shining and spring in the air, the nesting season just begun — everything so like it was that last day when we were together on Creag Dubh — I have been wondering. A man like that, so full of a restless, boundless energy, and that trawler lying in the bay. Was he really too old to start his life again — in another country, amongst different people?