Chris said shortly she’d manage it herself, she wasn’t in her second childhood, either; and they laughed and went up and left the road and waded through the whins and the broom and over fences and up steep braes, steep so’s you’d to clutch up step by step with handfuls of heather and grass for holds, Ellen flinched with stung legs and Ewan slipped on smooth shoes, Chris laughed back at both of them, shinning the slopes light and free and sure of her hold, she looked back from the uppermost ledge and waved to them, poor fusionless creatures her father would have called them—her father who all his years in Cairndhu had never (that she knew) climbed Barmekin, over-busy with chaving and slaving his flesh, body and soul and that dark, fierce heart, into the land to wring sustenance therefrom. So the whirlimagig went round and on: Father, now Ewan, the hill little to either, only to her who came in between and carried the little torch one from the other on that dreich, daft journey that led nowhither—

But, standing up there, with the wind in her hair, the thought came to her that THAT didn’t much matter—daft the journey, but the journeying good. And she looked at the slopes gay in their gear, useless and meaningless but fine fun to climb…. The other two thought the same when they came, Ellen with smooth braids tangled a bit, a damp lock over Ewan’s high forehead, they laughed and said things about Excelsior, young and sexless both, like the angels, dark angels, folk of an older stock than Chris’s, intenter and sharper, not losing themselves in heather dreams or the smell of broom. Ewan said he was hungry,—aren’t you. Miss Johns? and Miss Johns said Aren’t I? Hungry as hell.

So they made their way in the brush of the broom along the outer wall of the old Pict fort built by the men of antique time, a holy place before Christ was born, Chris said they’d find shade from the sun in its lithe. Syne they came on a thing they had little looked for, Ewan swore, his old passion for old times rekindled—men had been here, a great gang of them, had torn down the walls and flung them aside, deep ruts showed where the carts had been driven: and within the inner walls of the fort were the char and ash of a great foolish fire.

Some celebration, Chris thought, not caring, Εwan did, he said it was a filthy outrage and justified nothing that had happened in Aberdeen since they told the first of their filthy stories—that was probably before Christ’s coming as well. Chris had never seen him so angered, she herself wasn’t, they were only rickles of stone from long syne raised up by daft childes who worshipped the sun. Εwan said That’s rot. You know nothing about it, and Chris gave a laugh and sat down on a stone, clasping her knees, not caring a fig one way or another. Miss Johns said I agree with Mrs Colquohoun. What does it matter what happens to this rubbish? There are things more in need of worrying about. Ewan turned his grey granite glance upon her: I didn’t expect that YOU would think different.