A caber was fetched, and the three heavy-weights reinforced by the blacksmith and a couple of other strong men drove it at the door. The noise was considerable, but the result was nil. Ben Nevis was divided between admiration of the door he had installed and annoyance with it for failing to appreciate that one could have too much of a good thing. The caber was replaced by a beam which required eight men to give it any propulsive force but was no more successful in disturbing the door than the caber had been.

Catriona and Mary MacDonald had made one or two attempts to enlist in the battering-parties, but every time their brothers had told them not to get in the way. This had rankled. They were such hefty young women that they had long ago decided to make the best of it and build up their sex-appeal on this very heftiness. Neither ever lost an opportunity to move something or lift something or overthrow something which would have been beyond the strength of the average woman. Both had distinguished themselves in the mêlée with the hikers, particularly Catriona, who had rescued her father from the hiker’s staff of the young woman roused to frenzy by his treatment of the mauve-shirted owner of the portable. In fact the successful imprisonment of the female hikers in the dungeon under the North Tower had been largely due to the competent way in which Catriona and Mary had handled them by the backs of their shorts. For this they had received no thanks. Indeed all they had received was a lecture from their mother for taking part in the battle.

Catriona and Mary MacDonald might despise women like Carrie and Myrtle Royde for their appalling femininity and disgusting coquetry, but they recognized bitterly that the sex-appeal of heftiness stood no chance against the odious wiles of small slim women prepared to be shamelessly provocative. Catriona had confessed it puzzled her why such a fuss was made about Myrtle Royde’s dark eyes and crimson cheeks, and Mary’s imagination was baffled to explain why the greenish eyes and red hair of Carrie Royde should attract so much attention.

“I do think men are extraordinary,” Catriona growled to her sister. “Just because the two Royde women have come out to watch the proceedings all the men are making the most tremendous business of pretending they’re performing feats of superhuman strength.”

“Father’s just as bad as any of them,” Mary growled on an even deeper note, for she was just a little bit heftier than her sister.

“He’s worse,” Catriona growled, “because he doesn’t lift anything himself but keeps telling everybody else how to lift it.”

“Catriona!”

“What’s the matter?”

“I’ve just remembered something,” Mary twanged in tones that resembled an excited pizzicato on the violoncello.

“What?”

“I’ve just remembered the trap-door.”

“What trap-door?”