‘I think it’s all right now,’ I whispered, and left her and skulked down from tree to tree until I came into a glade that opened on the gorge. I saw about a dozen men, with four or five dogs at their heels, advancing in the direction of the loch. I did not wait to see more. Immediately I perceived the rifles on their backs, and the crew’s wild air, I slipped back to where Terry cowered. She stood up at my approach, gazing at me with enormous eyes. Her hands, blue with cold, went to her breast.

‘Oh! Oh!’ she said, articulating with difficulty. ‘I didn’t see you coming! you frightened me!’

‘We must get back to the cave,’ I whispered, ‘there may be other men—’

‘Are there men?’ she asked in low tones.

I nodded.

‘If they find the cave we are as good as dead,’ I went on. ‘What a fool I was to leave the rifle!’

We climbed up the hill-side as far as the wood gave us shelter. Then, casting back and fore, we ranged the steep until we found a ravine gouged out by a winter-flooding burn. Though the course of the stream was dry there were pools of water in rocky pots in the gully. We could not avoid them. We trailed ourselves up the gorge, splattering through the pools, clambering up dry falls of rock and shale-slides with infinite care lest we dislodged a stone and sent it tumbling down to warn the men below. Now and then as I crawled I could see them beneath us if I raised my head so much as an inch. They seemed very near; I could scarcely believe they had not our progress in plain view.

At length we lay breathless on the summit almost directly above our cave. I crept to the edge of the cliff whence I could peer at the disturbers of our peace. They were making north along the shore of Loch Coulter. Their dogs stalked at their heels. We waited until the company of men and dogs vanished over the rim of moor beyond the loch. No other danger showed itself. We searched the country, especially the valley to the west from which these men had come. We saw nothing there to alarm us.

‘Are they gone, Hugh?’ Terry whispered behind me.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I’m cold, Hugh,’ she went on.

‘We’ll go down,’ I said, rising heavily to my feet. ‘Oh, I’m stiff and sore! Did you hurt yourself, Terry?’

She shook her head.

When we came to the cave I ran in to snatch up my rifle and load it.

‘I’ll never go out without this again,’ I said.

‘Why are you loading the rifle? Why are you looking like that?’ Terry demanded.

‘I’m loading it in case I need it,’ I told her grimly. ‘What am I looking like?’