“Well, I don’t know,” said Chester Royde. “It seems to me I’m the stooge for man and beast in this part of the world. Get away, you brute. Booh! Bang!”

The stag threw up his mighty head, and seemed to sniff at the sound. Then he tossed his antlers, shook his flanks, lolloped away from the cave with a contemptuous lack of urgency.

“Duncan, I believe that stag was laughing at us,” Ben Nevis said.

“That was the very thing I was thinking myself,” the old keeper agreed. “He’ll be on his way back to Ben Glass now with the hinds. He’ll be blowing to them all the way he mocked us.”

“If I could stick that stag’s horns on that stiff’s chin or alternatively stick that stiff’s chin on that stag’s horns I won’t worry what kind of a mess Franklin D. Roosevelt makes of Wall Street,” Chester Royde declared.

Chapter 19

BOG-MYRTLE

IT WAS TOO late when Johnnie Macpherson returned with the empty Daimler to make any effective attempt to rescue the six prisoners of the hikers that day. He and Archie MacColl, the driver of the lorry, had spent one of those afternoons so dear to the hearts of West Highlanders, an afternoon of cigarettes and gossip, completely unaware that the situation called for the slighest initiative on their part. It was not until a certain emptiness reminded Johnnie Macpherson the hour for his tea had passed that he wondered what could be keeping Ben Nevis.

“My goodness, Archie,” he exclaimed, “it’s a quarter to six by the new time.”

“A quarter to six?” Archie MacColl echoed, shaking his round red freckled face “Look at that now. And I promised Coinneach Mór” (this was Kenny Macdonald the blacksmith) “I’d fetch that broken gate for him this afternoon so as he could get to work upon it on Monday morning.”

“What gate is that?”

“The gate into the bull’s field. It’s been broken since last October, and it’s a big nuisance untying it and tying it up again all the time.”

“Och, it’s waited so long now it can wait till Monday just a! well.”

“Och yes,” Archie agreed. “Just as well.”

“I’d promised to have a look at Mrs Parsall’s wireless for her this afternoon,” Johnnie announced.

“Is it broken?”