Duncan banged on it with the bunch of keys.

“Keep quiet in there unless you want to stay there,” he shouted sternly.

The screaming stopped.

“Oh, my god, girls, it’s a man,” cried the young woman who thought she had been bitten. “Don’t let him in till I’m presentable.”

She had just zipped up her shorts when the great lock turned to admit the chaplain and the gamekeeper, the latter carrying a stable-lantern the beams of which illuminated the group of eight young women, but made the vaulted glooms beyond seem more profound.

Mr Fletcher had time to utter only the word ‘ladies’ when by far the most piercing shriek yet emitted came from the lips of the young woman who thought she had been bitten as with a frantic gesture of horror she unzipped her shorts again. A second later a mouse leapt for freedom. Poor Winifred Gosnay, who was an assistant in one of the great London stores, had not let down her shorts for nothing. Something had been walking up the inside of her leg. Something may have bitten her behind. And that something actually was a mouse.

“Come along, ladies,” said the chaplain in soothing accents. “You will soon be in more comfortable quarters if you follow me.”

In all his ordained life Mr Fletcher had never been so supremely the shepherd of his flock as when he shepherded a titubation of young women to the great dining-hall of Glenbogle Castle that August evening.

“Supper is being prepared for you, and after supper it has been arranged to drive you back as near as possible to your camp, with the proviso that you will move from the land of MacDonald of Ben Nevis at the earliest possible moment to-morrow. Is that understood?”

The female hikers muttered what sounded like an affirmative, but they were still too much shaken by the memory of that mouse leaping into the lantern-light from Winifred Gosnay’s unzipped shorts to express anything except reminiscent shudders.

“I am now going to fetch the gentlemen of your party,” Mr Fletcher went on. “Ah, here is Mrs Parsall the housekeeper. Mrs Parsall, these are the young ladies whom Ben Nevis has invited to supper.”

Mrs Parsall eyed them coldly. She and Mrs Ablewhite the cook had long ago made up their minds what they would give these shameless half-naked hussies. And it was not supper.