“Trixie, you know what a reasonable man I am. Now please don’t make me angry by talking any more about the police. I’d sooner Glenbogle were burnt to the ground than give Lindsay-Wolseley a chance of saying to me ‘I told you so.’”

“He seems quite a pleasant young man, this Mr Macmillan,” said Mrs MacDonald, steering the conversation away from Colonel Lindsay-Wolseley.

“I don’t object to him personally at all,” Ben Nevis admitted. “And I really was very glad that he turned up when he did. I was on the point of bursting, I think. It’s a fearful strain having to sit and listen to the bragging of a bounder like this Buckham creature…. Good God!”

“Donald, what is the matter now?”

She might well ask. Lady Macbeth called upon to calm her husband when the ghost of Banquo sat down in his place at dinner may have been confronted by such an expression of incredulous horror.

“Donald dear, what is the matter?”

For answer Ben Nevis pointed with his finger at a page of the Scotsman upon his knee.

Mrs MacDonald leant over to see what in that austere newspaper could have thus convulsed her husband’s countenance.

She saw looking round the corner of a wireless cabinet a face. She saw a finger pointed, it seemed, at her personally. She read in large letters LEND ME YOUR EARS. She read on:

“Friends,

“The other day I overheard my secretary say to a client, ‘Mr Buckham will be away on his holiday next week,’ and my heart leapt like a schoolboy’s at the sound of the magic word. Some of you will be away on your holidays next week. Don’t forget to take your Little Songster with you. The good weather I hope you’ll enjoy will seem all the better if set fair to music, and if by some unlucky chance it should rain the Little Songster will make you never mind a bit about the weather. Cheerio, folks. Have a good time, and good listening!

“PERCY BUCKHAM.”

“That’s why his face was vaguely familiar to me,” Ben Nevis roared. “I must have seen it in an advertisement. But I’m astonished at a paper like the Scotsman printing an advertisement like this. I shall write a letter of protest. Oh, well, I knew as soon as they started a page of photographs and a crossword puzzle the Scotsman was going to the dogs like everything in this modern world. Fancy opening my Scotsman and seeing that bounder’s face glaring at me round one of those ghastly wireless contraptions.”

“Well, turn over the page, Donald. Don’t keep looking at this man’s face if it irritates you.”

At that moment Toker brought word that Neil Maclennan wanted to speak to Ben Nevis. The chieftain came back presently, looking grave. It appeared from Neil Maclennan’s information that the Castle was now entirely surrounded by hikers.