And so, but for a strange turn in the wheel of fate, the matter would have rested as far as I was concerned. For an evening the story of the sixteenth Earl Fingarton and his wife Betty had appealed to my imagination, then stress of work drove it from my mind. In Scotland, especially in the Highlands, the fierce pride of family and clan seems natural and right: from time immemorial that pride has been a dominant trait of those who live there. And up in Skye, where I wandered for a while before settling down to work, the old Earl’s action seemed easier to understand.... As a man, his heart had died with his wife Betty; as the sixteenth of his line, he had gone forth into the world, which had ceased to interest him, and taking unto himself another wife, had waited until she gave him a son. Then, his duty over, he had come back to his dead and his memories.... Callous, perhaps, to the living; primitive in his treatment of his second wife, as men of old were primitive in their treatment of women, regarding them as merely the bearers of their children—yet understandable.... Look on the glory of Glen Sligachan, and it is understandable. Country such as that in another part of the Highlands belonged to the Fingartons, and the breathless marvel of it is not to be lightly parted with. It must remain for a man’s son, and his son’s son ... a sacred heritage. There must be no outsider to break the line. Thus did it strike me as I settled down to work in the island that I loved. And then, as I have said, it gradually faded from my mind. Vast tracts of territory at present infested with sleeping sickness could, I felt convinced, be rendered immune from that dreadful scourge if my proposals were adopted. Starting from the point at which the German Commission under Professor Koch had left off, years before the war, I had carried his investigations several steps further. And I knew that I had been successful. So I found an undisturbed place to write, and quickly became absorbed in my task. Without undue conceit, I knew it was an important one.... And then, one evening, after I had been working for about a fortnight, occurred the strange turn of the wheel which was to bring my attention back from the dark interior of Africa to things much nearer at hand. I had finished for the day, and was sitting by the open window watching the sun sink in a blaze of golden glory over the Coolin Hills, when a small urchin obtruded himself into my line of vision, and stared at me fixedly in the intervals of sucking his thumb. The inspection apparently proved satisfactory, and after a while the small urchin spoke. His language required interpretation by my landlady, but finally I gathered that the attentions of a medical man were wanted. And since the local doctor was away, he wanted to know whether I would come. "It’s for Mrs. MacDerry, sir," explained my landlady. "She’s old and ailing fast."