This was not Alexander. This was not his beloved Alexander. But it was. He was there in the room. Dying as he had done before, his frail hand lifting to his brother in a desperate appeal for help. Henderson’s mind spun in its frenzy. This could not be, and yet it was. The body was as solid as the crude pine wall it rested against. It was no phantom. And the face. That face.

The one he had loved so desperately. It was looking at him now. Imploring him. Begging him.

‘It hurts, James.’

He was still unable to move. Tears pricked his eyes, but his terror and shock kept him nailed to the floor by the bed. His own voice sounded alien to him when he found it.

‘Sandy?’

‘It hurts, James. My head. I want Mother.’

Henderson was back there, back in his uncle’s croft where they whiled away the summer months, in the barn with the kittens mewling in the hay and the sunlight bursting through the wooden slats like fingers of joy. And he was there to remember that it was his fault.

‘You can’t.’

‘I can so, you scaredy cat.’

He was looking again into the face of his beloved younger brother, that face with its blue eyes and curling lip, always ready with a smile or a burst of laughter, and he was daring it to do something it didn’t want to do.

‘Prove it, shrimp.’

His sweet Alexander, Sandy, tiny imp of fun, looked nervously up at the great plough hanging from the beams by its chains and licked his lips.

‘All the way up?’

‘The whole way.’

He looked into his older brother’s eyes and took comfort from something he saw there. Was it love? Trust?

Alexander stepped up onto the hay bale and spat on his hands. The rusting metal hulk hung impassively on its chains, the single chain that had broken free of its beam hanging enticingly down about four feet from the highest bale. It was a rusty old thing, sure enough. It hung there the way dead moles hung on fences, as a warning to newer ploughs that their fate was sealed unless they performed. Stored high up in the rafters along with other junk to make room for things that had yet to fail in their duties. All Sandy had to do was to jump up and catch the chain, climb it and crawl along the plough to descend on the upper level of the barn from which it was attached. James had done it. He did it while Sandy watched. That beautiful joyful creature had clapped his hands in delight and appreciation when his older brother had leapt to safety on the upper floor of the barn, leaving the plough swinging madly in his wake. And now, as reward for that loyalty and affection, he was going to make Sandy do it against his will.