“Well, they were rigged up in reach-me-down kilts and had that awful earnest Highland look,” said Iain. “Ghastly tartans too, neither of which ought to be allowed outside a music-hall. I’m sure they were Scottish Nationalists.”

“But they weren’t proposing to camp in Glenbogle?” Ben Nevis pressed incredulously.

“Couldn’t say,” his youngest son replied. “But if they do, those tartans will scare every bird and stag in the neighbourhood. They’ll scare the salmon back to the sea.”

“Do you hear that, MacIsaac? You missed our little scuffle in the heather this afternoon. Here’s a chance for you.”

This remark was addressed by Ben News to his Chamberlain, Major Norman MacIsaac, late of the 8th Service Battalion of The Duke of Clarence’s Own Clanranald Highlanders (The Inverness-shire Greens). If the White Knight had worn a kilt instead of armour he would have looked much like Major Norman MacIsaac. And the Chamberlain of Ben Nevis had a similar gentle melancholy which most people attributed to the boisterous energy of the Chief he served, but which was his natural disposition. The Chamberlain, to say truth, had been delighted that urgent business in Fort William had kept him off the moors to-day and therefore relieved him of any responsibility in the matter of that little scuffle in the heather.

“You’d better give orders to keep a sharp look out for these two fellows,” Ben Nevis continued. “And if they are Scottish Nationalists I’ll teach ’em what real Scottish Nationalism means.”

The savage guffaw with which the Chieftain adorned this threat seriously disturbed Carrie, who was convinced that the two kilted figures seen by Iain MacDonald were her fellow-members of the Scottish Brotherhood of Action. At all costs they must be warned somehow. The pipers were skirling Over the Sea to Skye now. It was an appropriate melody for the heroine’s mood in which Carrie found herself.

When the pipers’ music was finished and they had withdrawn from the dining-room, above what seemed the almost deathly quiet that succeeded, there was heard from the direction of the courtyard on which the windows of the dining-room faced a series of calls resembling the kind of noises made by Red Indians gathering to attack the logwood house of a settler.

“What the deuce is that?” Ben Nevis exclaimed, tossing his head like one of his own stags on Ben Booey challenging a rival on Ben Glass in the misty moonlight of October.

“Cooee! Cooee! Wolla-wolla-wolla-wolla! Oo-h00! Oo-hoo!”

“That’s mighty like the war-cry of the Carroways,” said Chester Royde. “Well, perhaps the Carroway war-cry is more ‘Oo-ha’ than ‘Oo-hoo.’ Still, it is mighty like it.”

Toker eyed the guest of honour nervously. He had not yet perfectly recovered from that mad rush which had swept him helplessly along the corridor and but for the bonnet table would have swept him right out of the Castle altogether.

Mrs MacDonald reduced the mysterious sounds to the level of commonplace experience.