“I thought I’d stay and talk over one or two little arrangements. My sleepiness has vanished all of a sudden. No, no, Arthur, I wouldn’t worry my head at all about those bullocks. After all, they are only bullocks, you must remember.”

Mr Prew’s reassurances were sharply interrupted by a wild shriek the echoes of which among the crags and precipices of Ben Booey were drowned by a louder shriek that made Mr. Buckham’s chin quiver like blancmange.

A moment later the ground was shaken by the thunder of hooves and Arthur Blencoe wriggled into the tent like a crocodile taking cover in the Nile.

“Something must have frightened them to stampede like that,” said Mr Buckham in a voice which lacked a little of its wonted incisiveness.

Mr Prew peeped out cautiously.

“Yes, they’ve stampeded right away from the camp. I remember now reading somewhere that these Highland cattle are very easily scared. But what caused the shriek?”

By now the camp was a-buzz, and figures were crawling out of the tents into the moonlight on every side.

“We must investigate,” Mr Buckham decided, his chin back to its old jut, his voice as vibrant as ever again. “If you and Mr Prew will move, Blencoe, I’ll be able to move myself.”

In the furthest corner of the camp a knot of hikers had gathered. The leader walked quickly toward it, and asked what was the matter.

“Oh, Mr Buckham, it’s Gladys and Mabel Woodmonger,” a young woman babbled excitedly. “A bull put his head into their tent and blew on Gladys’s face and when she screamed he caught his horns in the tent and went off with it. I looked out when I heard the scream and the bull charged right past me waving the tent on his horns, and all the other bulls went galloping off like mad things.”

“Is that all?” the leader commented with the icy indifference of a dictator who hears that the purge he ordered has been carried out. “Well, you’d better get back to your tents.”

“But Gladys and Mabel Woodmonger haven’t got a tent, Mr. Buckham. The bull took it away with him.”

“They must squeeze in somewhere else. Now, Blencoe, you’d better get back to your post.”

And this was the man whom, away across the glen in his castle, the Lord of Ben Nevis, Glenbogle, Glenbristle, Strathdiddle, Strathdun, Loch Hoch and Loch Hoo thought lightheartedly he could expel from his demesne like a stray cat from a backyard.

Chapter 17

FISHING