“That’s what they say. They’re camped on Ben Booey,” Carrie said.

“I don’t believe it’s possible,” James declared. “Fifty or sixty perhaps. But five or six hundred! It’s a ridiculous figure.”

“Camped on Ben Booey, are they?” Alan put in. “I’ll bet they have Ben Nevis and Mr Royde shut up in that cave they say Prince Charlie hid in, which of course is nonsense.”

“Why should it be nonsense?” Robert Menzies demanded sternly. He was a fiery Jacobite, and resented a slight even on a cave hallowed by the Prince’s name.

“Och, away with you, Robert, I’m not going to argue about Prince Charlie, just now,” Alan told him.

“Who started the argument, Alan?”

“No argument has started. What’s the use of arguing about Prince Charlie when we have to deal with the present? You may be a good architect, Robert, but you’re frightfully unpractical. You’ve no conception of poetic action.”

“He certainly is a good architect,” Carrie interposed. “I’ve been looking at his last sketch for the new house, and it’s quite lovely.”

“Do you like it, Mrs Royde? I’m awfully pleased.”

Robert Menzies had not had the advantage of meeting Carrie in the romantic circumstances in which his two friends had met her that day in Glenbristle. So far he had been able to behold her only as a possible patroness. He had fancied she was not particularly impressed by his plans for Knocknacolly. Her sudden compliment to his work made him her slave. Carrie wanted the help of the S.B.A., and Robert Menzies made up his mind there and then that she should have it.

“You and Alan and I had better get along down to Glasgow to-morrow morning, James. We’ll need all of two days to collect our fellows,” he said.

“Wouldn’t it be as well if one of us stayed here?” Alan asked.

And thus it was decided that Alan should be the one to stay.

“It’s a pity in a way Robert and I can’t catch the train from Fort William this afternoon,” said James presently. “We’ll have all our work cut out to collect enough of the S.B.A. and be back by Tuesday.”

And thus it was decided that Carrie should drive the lawyer and the architect into Fort William, returning later to fetch the poet and Myrtle to Glenbogle.

“How far away we seem from the rest of the world up here,” Myrtle exclaimed when she and Alan were sitting on the tangled lawn of Knocknacolly Lodge that looked out across the wide level moor to the mountains all round.

“But it’s only seeming, that’s the worst of it,” Alan muttered. “And at this moment it’s the world that’s worrying me.”