Far different was the scene on the field of Achnabo when Ben Nevis and his guests returned to it after lunch. Omnibuses and cars from Fort William and Fort Augustus, and even from lordly Inverness itself, had discharged their sightseers. The battered Fords and Morrises and Austins of many a village and clachan had brought gossips old and young, male and female. Former pupils were asking former schoolmasters and schoolmistresses if they recognized them. Shepherds were discussing gloomily the latest low level to which the price of wool had sunk. Crofters were exchanging tales about the misdeeds of the Department of Agriculture. Farmers were shaking their heads over the prospects for store-cattle at the next sales. Tea was being swilled in half a dozen tents and insides were being plastered with slices of chalkwhite Glasgow bread. Toward one tent with the Committee’s cardboard sign a procession of slightly surreptitious figures, all with the same expression of elaborate purposelessness, was ever wending, and from the same tent another procession of figures whose tongues sometimes peeped from pursed satisfied lips but whose eyes had the innocent look of children beholding life for the first time was ever emerging. It is a remarkable tribute to the enduring influence of John Knox’s ethics that in a country where enough whisky has been distilled and drunk during the four centuries of Presbyterianism to flavour every loch in Scotland, natives who take one dram of it at a public festivity like the Glenbogle Gathering should still be able to romanticize the little indulgence with the flavour of mortal sin.

Within the rope ring that enclosed the arena the change was not less remarkable. Runners were tearing round amid the excited exhortations of their supporters to win or lose races. Massive figures in kilts and vests whose muscles stood out like the bumps in the mattresses of remote Highland inns were tossing the caber and throwing the hammer. And on that platform, where for three seemingly endless hours piper after piper had marched up and down playing the same example of ceòl mór, half a dozen little girls whose velvet doublets jingled with medals were dancing reels and strathspeys and jigs and as they leapt higher and higher displaying beneath their kilts a lather of frilly underclothes. Laughter and chatter and cheers resounded upon the sunny air, and in all that merry throng only Kilwhillie and Colonel Lindsay-Wolseley and seven pipers looked sad, the seven pipers because they had not won a prize, Kilwhillie and the Colonel because the piping had only just finished and they had not yet lunched.

“You’re not one of the judges for the dancing, Hugh?” the Chieftain asked.

“I think Wolseley and I have done enough judging for the present,” Kilwhillie answered reproachfully. “We haven’t had any lunch yet, and there will be another hour or two later with the piping.”