11 King DrammochTowards sundown the four men went down the hill to the township of King Drammoch. It was a sprawling place with one winding street, set about with buildings of all kinds—here a native wattle-and-daub hut, there a square wooden house built after the Gallic fashion, and sometimes a stone-built edifice with roof and portico after the manner of Roman houses. It was a town without any special character—a place which had grown up haphazard, taking from life what it needed, as the passing occasion rose, without thought, carelessly, ignoring the future.
And its people seemed to share the nature of the town, for they lived gaily, in the present, as though famine and disease, Rome and Boudicca did not exist.
A party of young men danced down the main street, wine-flasks clutched in
