So on Sunday morning, rather later than they’d intended because Mr Fletcher took advantage of the Chieftain’s absence to give a longer sermon than usual, they arrived at Knocknacolly at the moment when Robert Menzies was making an omelette and his two companions were pointing out his mistakes, standing one at each elbow.

“For God’s sake, you silly pair of clowns, stop your blethering, and let me make the damned omelette my own way,” the architect was shouting as Carrie and Myrtle walked into the room, that room which they had taken so much trouble to make pleasant and cosy for the three young men and which now after a week of exclusively male attention was as richly squalid as a Hogarth garret.

“Oh, you’re making an omelette,” Carrie exclaimed. “I’m terribly good at omelettes.”

“So am I,” said Myrtle eagerly. “The secret of a good omelette is always to …”

But Robert’s omelette was too far advanced by now to be interfered with and there were not enough eggs left to show him how it ought to have been made.

“Anyway, what’s more important than omelettes is the problem of Glenbogle,” Carrie said, and she related what had happened yesterday. “Once upon a time, Alan, you and James had a plan to kidnap Ben Nevis. Now you’ve got to think out a plan to unkidnap him and my poor husband,” she went on.

“If we could get a few of the S.B.A. to Glenbogle,” said James, “we’d soon deal with these Cockney hikers, would we not?”

The poet and the architect warmly agreed.

“Well, why don’t you get the S.B.A.?” asked Carrie.

“Oh yes, why don’t you?” said Myrtle.

James Buchanan looked worried.

“It’s really a question of finance,” he admitted at last. “Two or three of them could manage right enough, but most of them are students and they haven’t really got the money to come all the way up here at a moment’s notice.”

“If that’s all you’re worrying about, James, you needn’t worry any more. I suppose I have a right to call on the members of the Brotherhood for action at my expense. Now see here, I’m pretty practical over matters like this. My notion would be for you to go and collect as many as you can and hire automobiles to rush them up to Glenbogle as soon as possible. How many do you think you could collect?”

“I think we might collect a couple of dozen, don’t you, Robert? But I don’t suppose we could get them together before Tuesday at the earliest.”

“Well, let’s make it Tuesday afternoon at the Castle with as many as you can get. Twenty-four aren’t very many against five or six hundred, but twenty-four will be better than nobody.”

“Five or six hundred?” James gasped.