They knew
nothing themselves. Only by comparison of their ignorance could
the student measure his own.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE ABYSS OF IGNORANCE (1902)
THE years hurried past, and gave hardly time to note their
work. Three or four months, though big with change, come to an
end before the mind can catch up with it. Winter vanished; spring
burst into flower; and again Paris opened its arms, though not
for long. Mr. Cameron came over, and took the castle of
Inverlochy for three months, which he summoned his friends to
garrison. Lochaber seldom laughs, except for its children, such
as Camerons, McDonalds, Campbells and other products of the mist;
but in the summer of 1902 Scotland put on fewer airs of coquetry
than usual. Since the terrible harvest of 1879 which one had
watched sprouting on its stalks on the Shropshire hillsides,
nothing had equalled the gloom. Even when the victims fled to
Switzerland, they found the Lake of Geneva and the Rhine not much
gayer, and Carlsruhe no more restful than Paris; until at last,
in desperation, one drifted back to the Avenue of the Bois de
Boulogne, and, like the Cuckoo, dropped into the nest of a better
citizen. Diplomacy has its uses. Reynolds Hitt, transferred to
Berlin, abandoned his attic to Adams, and there, for long summers
to come, he hid in ignorance and silence.
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