“I wouldn’t want to die for anybody,” said the gaunt man. “Och, I don’t take to the notion of dying at all. It’s very difficult to know what is going to happen. I wouldn’t mind death so much at all if I was sure his friend Satan wasn’t waiting round the corner just behind him. It’s a terrible business that, right enough. The minister was preaching about it last Sunday morning. It was a very powerful sermon. It lasted for all but a quarter of two hours, and when we came out of the church we were just burning with the good man’s words as if with the flames of Hell. Big Duncan—that’s the headkeeper—he grew so hot that the packet of black-striped balls he keeps in his pocket melted with the heat and when he put his hand in his pocket to find a black-striped ball for his grandson Willie to suck, his hand just stuck inside the bag and he had to give Willie two because he could not pull them apart. Och, no, mistress, I wouldn’t be putting myself forward to die for anybody.”

“Doesn’t the old clan loyalty survive?” Carrie asked.

“Och, there’s no clans left now,” said the gaunt man. “The clans were finished long ago.”

“And I suppose you think the fairies are finished too?”

“I never saw the fairies myself,” said the gaunt man, picking up the tent and continuing along the path toward the Castle. “But I wouldn’t like to be so positive there are none of them left. Och, I’m not saying there are any of them, but there might be.”

Carrie found Toker distressed about the interruption of her walk.

“It was quite all right,” she assured him, “I was feeling pretty tired when I was made to sit down and behave myself.”

“It’s very good of you, madam, to take the unpleasant business so philosophically.”

“And after all he wasn’t to know that I wasn’t a hiker.”

“I’m afraid I cannot accept your kind excuses for him, madam. It is the business of a gentleman’s servant to know these things. It should be second nature, as they say.”

When Myrtle returned from Knocknacolly she was full of what a delightful place could be made of it if the present lodge were pulled down and a modern house built on the site.

“It’s a pity our boy friend isn’t an architect, Carrie. We might have gotten him a good job to keep him amused till we came back next summer. How did you find him in his cave?”

“I didn’t find him.”

“You didn’t?” Myrtle exclaimed.

“No; I had all those letters to write.”

“And you wrote them?”

“I certainly did.”

“But Mrs MacDonald said you took your lunch with you.”