In the spring, when the fresh new blades of green grass began to poke through the melting snow, they would always return; the summer walkers, the travellers, the tinkers, the showman — the Gypsies.
You could smell them in the air; hear them on the wind. They would arrive in droves during the night like ghosts in the dark – a thousand ants fanning out over the farmland on the east bank of Loch Ness between Lochend and Inverness.
They camp until late fall after the harvest, and the monies paid, and the smell of snow drifts quietly in the cold air. Then, they disappear, like ghosts again, escaping in the night.