The memory of the visits of these early geological pioneers had faded away when I came to Skye. It seemed that no geologist since their day had been seen in Strath, so that the appearance of a lad wandering about alone and, as it looked, aimlessly, with a hammer in his hand and a bag over his shoulder, gave rise to much wonderment and conjecture among the crofters. They knew me by the name of _Gille na Clach_, or the ‘Lad of the Stones,’ and came in the end to see that I was harmless. But now and then they would express their convictions or their pity. Once, when passing some huts on the shore of Loch Slapin, I stopped to break off a fragment from a projecting rock in front of them. As usual, I looked at the chip with my lens, and, having satisfied myself as to the nature of the rock, was resuming my walk, when I heard two old crones at their doors speaking of me. I knew very little Gaelic, but I caught up the emphatic remark that closed the conversation--‘As a cheill.’ When I returned to Kilbride I asked the tutor of the family the meaning of the expression, and learnt that it was, ‘He’s wrong in the head.’ [Sidenote: LIFE ON PABBA] One of my earliest excursions from Kilbride led me to the island of Pabba, which lies like a flat green meadow in front of Broadford Bay. Hugh Miller had described to me its richly fossiliferous Liassic shales, and I went with the determination to spend some time on the island, and make a good collection of its fossils. The only habitation in the place was one small hut, tenanted by Charles Mackinnon and his family, who looked after the cattle sent across from the farm of Corrie. Coming with the recommendation of their master, I was cordially welcomed. But the resources of the island were slender. My sleeping quarters were a heap of heather in a corner of the upper floor of a barn, while for my dining-room I had the use of the ‘ben’ or inner room in Charles’ hut. The food consisted chiefly of potatoes, oat-cakes, milk, and tea, with an occasional herring or an egg. After a day’s work along the shore, I would spend the evening in the hut, labelling and wrapping up my specimens, while Mackinnon, who knew a little English, sat by the side of the peat fire, and gave me his company. We had been engaged in this way for some time the first evening, when the door opened, and his wife looked in. After watching me for a few moments arranging my bits of stone, she made a remark in Gaelic which drew an angry reproof from her ‘goodman,’ who ordered her to go away. With some difficulty I drew from him the admission that the poor woman had only said ‘if she wassna kennin’ ye had sense, she wad be thinking ye wass a terrible eediot.’