The imaginative observer capable of rejecting the materialistic explanation that it was a sporting party walking up any game that was about would have derived from the spectacle of Mac ’ic Eachainn’s line of battle the deepest romantic gratification. On the right as befitted MacDonalds was the Chieftain himself, a hefty son on either side of him, a daughter not less hefty on either side of their brothers, the tartan of the kilts and skirts in which red predominated recalling a dozen poems of battles fought by the MacDonalds of Ben Nevis. A few yards behind this line of red and immediately behind Mac ’ic Eachainn himself marched Myrtle Royde carrying a flask of whisky.

A pity Hector was out with his regiment in India, his father reflected. This was the very girl for him. Murdoch was too much of a slowcoach. He ought to have done better with the chances he had already had. And after all this jolly little girl with so much money in prospect would want an eldest son. She’d be sure to cotton on to Hector. He had a good mind to send an urgent cable telling Hector to apply for leave at once and fly home. It would cost a bit, but nothing venture nothing win. Ben Nevis looked round and smiled benignly at his vivandière, and the answering smile dimpling those cheeks decided him. He would cable Hector to obtain leave for urgent family reasons and come by plane.

The centre of Mac ’ic Eachainn’s line of battle consisted of Chester Royde, whose fat face had taken on the severe lines of an Arizona sheriff riding after a gang of rustlers in the timeless air of Wild West romance, and his head-keeper, Duncan Macdonald, who looked like Elijah hot upon the trail of the priests of Baal. The left was commanded by Hugh Cameron of Kilwhillie, who had a couple of gillies with him.

For a quarter of an hour the line advanced steadily across Drumcockie’s heather. Then as the moorland began to slope toward the braes of Strathdiddle Mac ’ic Eachainn uttered a shout.

“There they are!”

Yes, there they were in green corduroy shorts and brown corduroy shorts, in pink shirts and pale green shirts and coffee-coloured shirts, hatless, towzled, with long sticks and crepe-soled shoes and knapsacks, there they were sitting round a fire they had just lighted to make tea and listening to a portable wireless, female hikers and male hikers to the number of sixteen.