This speculation was prompted by a lull which had lasted for two or three minutes. The answer came almost at once with a most terrific crash as the oaken door gave way before the impact of a beam twice the size of any yet used and propelled by ten stalwart batterers at the double.

“I knew it could be done,” Ben Nevis was heard proclaiming with a triumphant roar. “Duncan, are you there? You’re all right, I hope? And Mr. Fletcher, is he all right?”

The batterers puffing with their supreme effort stood aside to let Mac ’ic Eachainn enter his Gradle, lantern in hand. Macbeth confronted by the three witches on the blasted heath probably looked much less startled than Ben Nevis when he beheld his two hefty daughters in their black silk evening gowns stained with the rust and dust and must of the accumulated rubbish in the old guardroom.

For a moment or two he could only bark wildly in utter bewilderment. Then he found his voice.

“How in the name of all that’s … in fact how the deuce did you get into the Cradle?”

“We came down through the trap-door in the old guardroom,” Catriona growled. “We’d have had both the prisoners out if the rope hadn’t gone phut when we were on it.”

“I should think the rope would go phut,” observed Iain, with a brother’s kindly sympathy. “Any rope would.”

“Less of it from you, fat boy,” Mary rumbled. “Something had to be done while you Lady Janes were all pecking at that door.”

“Now don’t start bickering together,” the patriarch commanded. “I want to hear how Mr Fletcher and Duncan found themselves in the Cradle.”

“That’s a very difficult question to answer, Ben Nevis,” his head-keeper replied. “But before we knew where we were that’s where we were.”

“But where were you?”

“That’s what I’m after telling you, Ben Nevis,” said Duncan severely. “We didn’t know where we were till we were where we were. That’s how it was, wasn’t it, Mr Fletcher?”

“It was certainly all very sudden,” the chaplain agreed. “Something in the nature of a rush took place when Duncan unlocked the door, but I was unfortunately butted in the wind and that temporarily deprived me of any ability to see what happened.”

“And I had a big bang on the nose,” Duncan added.

“Good lord, I should think you did,” Ben Nevis exclaimed. “You’d better go in and get Mrs Ablewhite to clap a beefsteak on it. Well, I’m sorry you both got knocked about, but in a way it’s just as well because it will give me a chance of bringing a counter-charge against these brutes if they try to sue me for assault.”

The voice of Mrs MacDonald was heard over her husband’s shoulder.