“Well, this is the first time water wetted my seat first since I used to sit down in puddles when I got tired of walking and wanted my nurse to take me home,” Chester Royd declared. “Say, Ben Nevis, is that the big idea about the way a kilt is made?”

“What?”

“Why, pleating it all around the behind like that. I’ll bet you haven’t had a drop of rain through yet.”

“No, I’m all right.”

“Of course you are. I thought at first it was just a picturesque bit of hooey like those feathers the Indians dress you up in when they adopt you into their tribe. War-bonnets they call them. But I’m beginning to grasp the design of the kilt. I see now it’s the only wear for up here. These breeches I’m wearing are no manner of use at all against rain like this. I’m just a crawling aquarium. Say, Ben Nevis, you don’t think that big stag is going to sit up there much longer in this rain? He’s the biggest moron in antlers if he does.”

“Not he. He’s enjoying it,” Ben Nevis declared.

“That stag must have the nature of a hippopotamus,” Royde commented.

It was about noon when they reached the cairn and found a dry recess in the stones where they could eat their sandwiches and refresh themselves for awhile after the long crawl across Achnacallach.

“Say, do my eyes look kind of funny, Ben Nevis?” his guest asked.

“They do look a little puffy. That’s the midges.”

“Well, they don’t feel like eyes to me at all. They feel more like a couple of currants somewhere in the middle of a cake. And they’re sinking deeper in all the time. I guess I won’t be able to see to aim my rifle when the time comes.”

Chester Royde had some reason to enquire anxiously about his eyes, and his host’s description of them as a little puffy was far from adequate. There was in fact very little indeed of them now visible because, through the swelling of the lids from the bites, Chester’s cheeks, naturally fat, had swelled to nearly twice their size and now threatened to engulf not merely what was left of his eyes but his ears as well.

“It’s not raining so heavily now,” Duncan announced after taking a look round the savage landscape.

“You want us to start?” Ben Nevis asked.

“It might be as well,” the old stalker suggested. “We will have a long long crawl along the top of Drumstickit.”

“Not on our bellies?” Royde exclaimed.

“Not all the way. Och, we’ll be able to move along perhaps for quite two miles upon our hands and knees, and we’ll have good cover from the rocks till we get to the top of Drumstickit.”