But the river Gavon, on the right bank of
which stand this half-dozen of chimneyless and wind-swept habitations,
is a geographical fact of far greater interest to outsiders, for the
salmon there are heavy fish, the mouth of the river is clear of nets,
and all the way up to Gavon Loch, some six miles inland, the
coffee-coloured water lies in pool after deep pool, which verge, if the
river is in order and the angler moderately sanguine, on a fishing
probability amounting almost to a certainty. In any case during the
first fortnight of September last I had no blank day on those delectable
waters, and up till the 15th of that month there was no day on which
some one at the lodge in which I was stopping did not land a fish out of
the famous Picts’ pool. But after the 15th that pool was not fished
again. The reason why is here set forward. The river at this point, after some hundred yards of rapid, makes a
sudden turn round a rocky angle, and plunges madly into the pool itself. Very deep water lies at the head of it, but deeper still further down on
the east side, where a portion of the stream flicks back again in a
swift dark backwater towards the top of the pool again. It is fishable
only from the western bank, for to the east, above this backwater, a
great wall of black and basaltic rock, heaved up no doubt by some fault
in strata, rises sheer from the river to the height of some sixty feet. It is in fact nearly precipitous on both sides, heavily serrated at the
top, and of so curious a thinness, that at about the middle of it where
a fissure breaks its topmost edge, and some twenty feet from the top,
there exists a long hole, a sort of lancet window, one would say, right
through the rock, so that a slit of daylight can be seen through it. Since, therefore, no one would care to cast his line standing perched on
that razor-edged eminence, the pool must needs be fished from the
western bank. A decent fly, however, will cover it all. It is on the western bank that there stand the remains of that which
gave its title to the pool, namely, the ruins of a Pict castle, built
out of rough and scarcely hewn masonry, unmortared but on a certain
large and impressive scale, and in a very well-preserved condition
considering its extreme antiquity. It is circular in shape and measures
some twenty yards of diameter in its internal span. A staircase of large
blocks with a rise of at least a foot leads up to the main gate, and
opposite this on the side towards the river is another smaller postern
through which down a rather hazardously steep slope a scrambling path,
where progress demands both caution and activity, conducts to the head
of the pool which lies immediately beneath it. A gate-chamber still
roofed over exists in the solid wall: inside there are foundation
indications of three rooms, and in the centre of all a very deep hole,
probably a well. Finally, just outside the postern leading to the river
is a small artificially levelled platform, some twenty feet across, as
if made to support some super-incumbent edifice. Certain stone slabs and
blocks are dispersed over it. Brora, the post-town of Gavon, lies some six miles to the south-west,
and from it a track over the moor leads to the rapids immediately above
the Picts’ pool, across which by somewhat extravagant striding from
boulder to boulder a man can pass dry-foot when the river is low, and
make his way up a steep path to the north of the basaltic rock, and so
to the village. But this transit demands a steady head, and at the best
is a somewhat giddy passage. Otherwise the road between it and Brora
lies in a long detour higher up the moor, passing by the gates of Gavon
Lodge, where I was stopping. For some vague and ill-defined reason the
pool itself and the Picts’ Castle had an uneasy reputation on the
country side, and several times trudging back from a day’s fishing I
have known my gillie take a longish circuit, though heavy with fish,
rather than make this short cut in the dusk by the castle. On the first
occasion when Sandy, a strapping yellow-bearded viking of twenty-five,
did this he gave as a reason that the ground round about the castle was
“mossy,” though as a God-fearing man, he must have known he lied. But on
another occasion he was more frank, and said that the Picts’ pool was
“no canny” after sunset. I am now inclined to agree with him, though,
when he lied about it, I think it was because as a God-fearing man he
feared the devil also. It was on the evening of September 14 that I was walking back with my
host, Hugh Graham, from the forest beyond the lodge. It had been a day
unseasonably hot for the time of year, and the hills were blanketed with
soft, furry clouds. Sandy, the gillie of whom I have spoken, was behind
with the ponies, and, idly enough, I told Hugh about his strange
distaste for the Picts’ pool after sunset. He listened, frowning a
little. “That’s curious,” he said. “I know there is some dim local superstition
about the place, but last year certainly Sandy used to laugh at it. I
remember asking him what ailed the place, and he said he thought
nothing about the rubbish folk talked. But this year you say he avoids
it.”

“On several occasions with me he has done so.”

Hugh smoked a while in silence, striding noiselessly over the dusky
fragrant heather. “Poor chap,” he said, “I don’t know what to do about him. He’s becoming
useless.”

“Drink?” I asked. “Yes, drink in a secondary manner. But trouble led to drink, and
trouble, I am afraid, is leading him to worse than drink.”

“The only thing worse than drink is the devil,” I remarked. “Precisely. That’s where he is going. He goes there often.”

“What on earth do you mean?” I asked. “Well, it’s rather curious,” said Hugh. “You know I dabble a bit in
folklore and local superstition, and I believe I am on the track of
something odder than odd. Just wait a moment.”

We stood there in the gathering dusk till the ponies laboured up the
hillside to us, Sandy with his six feet of lithe strength strolling
easily beside them up the steep brae, as if his long day’s trudging had
but served to half awaken his dormant powers of limb. “Going to see Mistress Macpherson again to-night?” asked Hugh. “Aye, puir body,” said Sandy. “She’s auld, and she’s lone.”

“Very kind of you, Sandy,” said Hugh, and we walked on. “What then?” I asked when the ponies had fallen behind again. “Why, superstition lingers here,” said Hugh, “and it’s supposed she’s a
witch. To be quite candid with you, the thing interests me a good deal. Supposing you asked me, on oath, whether I believed in witches, I should
say ‘No.’ But if you asked me again, on oath, whether I suspected I
believed in them, I should, I think, say ‘Yes.’ And the fifteenth of
this month--to-morrow--is Gavon’s Eve.”

“And what in Heaven’s name is that?” I asked. “And who is Gavon? And
what’s the trouble?”

“Well, Gavon is the person, I suppose, not saint, who is what we should
call the eponymous hero of this district.