WHILE MRS CHESTER Royde Jr. was asleep on that green knoll in Glenbristle the members of the house party together with two or three of the neighbouring shots the Chieftain of Ben Nevis considered worthy of his best moor were enjoying their lunch after the most satisfactory bag registered on any morning of the Twelfth for six years.

“If we do as well this afternoon on Drumcockie, Hugh, we might lower the ’22 record.”

This remark was addressed by the Chieftain to Hugh Cameron of Kilwhillie, a small button-headed man with long thin drooping moustaches, a faded kilt and a faded eye. Although some ten years junior to Ben Nevis, he was his prime favourite among the Inverness-shire lairds. Their land nowhere marched together. Kilwhillie was a better fisherman; but Ben Nevis preferred the gun, and Kilwhillie was no match for him with a gun. Both were fond of whisky and both flattered themselves they could carry as much of it without a slip of the tongue or a trip of the toe as any two lairds on either side of the Great Glen. You could not call them boon companions, for there was a touch of Celtic melancholy about Kilwhillie, attributed by some to liver, which forbade the epithet; but their intimacy was as close as men in their class can achieve. It was beautifully expressed once by Mrs MacDonald when she said that Donald never slept so soundly and so peacefully as when Hughie Cameron had dined at Glenbogle. The laird of Kilwhillie was unmarried, not from misogyny but because he had failed to persuade either of the two young women to whom he had proposed to accept him.

“And I don’t intend to try again,” he used to assure Ben Nevis. “I don’t think this Bruce and the spider business has any bearing on marriage.”

And Ben Nevis, who always called it a pity when a good fellow got married, used to agree warmly with his friend, though sometimes he would remind him about the succession.

“There’s not so much to succeed to now,” Kilwhillie would say, swallowing a dram recklessly. “Let the Department of Agriculture take over what’s left.”

But this was the kind of talk which suited a dying fire and an empty decanter. Up here in the heather on a fine Twelfth of August the mood was different.

“Splendid view, isn’t it?” Ben Nevis exclaimed to his guests, with a justifiable touch of Highland pride, for indeed it was a splendid view over the wide level of Strathdun away to where flashed the silver of Loch Hoch, whose farthest bank marked the boundaries of Mac ’ic Eachainn’s land.

Chester Royde eyed the chieftain thoughtfully as he chewed slowly on a mouthful of chicken and ham. Then he turned to Kilwhillie, who was reclining next him on the heather: