at only four o’clock, the blue dusk had crept in, and a fine new moon, delicate as an eyelash, hung above them in the sapphire sky. The snow-capped hills became almost luminous in the strange half-light, and the ebbing tide was draining the firth, revealing sweeps of beach and sandbank. Curlews still flew, skimming the shore, but other birds were silent, their song finished for the-day.
