‘Risk or not, we can’t let ourselves perish of hunger and cold,’ I declared. ‘Light the fire, Terry. They’re gone, all out of sight.’

I had barely left the cave when I was inside again shouting, ‘Put out that fire, put it out!’

We dragged the flaming sticks upon the floor and beat them out.

Terry was white and shaking. When the fire was extinguished I began to tremble myself.

‘There’s a rearguard too,’ I said hoarsely.

‘Did they—did they see you?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know—they were almost on me—one on each side of the valley—walking along the hill-sides—’

I sat in the mouth of the cave with my rifle across my knee. A long time passed before I ventured to look out. Night was drawing near, dull, cold, and ominous. I could see no signs of men. We lighted our fire and Terry used some of our dear stores making a meal. I grudged each mouthful that I ate, yet my ravening hunger mocked my scruples and my fears for the future. We were wrapt in misery like a cloak, hungry and cold and weak with spent fears. There may be a pike on my set-line. I shall go down when night comes, dark, safe, dear night.

‘I must get meat to-morrow, come what will,’ I said.

‘We must have meat soon,’ Terry agreed. And then, spreading out her hands to the fire she laughed, and said, ‘Oh, fire, I love you.’

5 OCTOBER

I HAVE BEEN listening to the quiet all day. Everything is as it was before these men appeared, the country empty, winter on the hills and autumn ageing in the valleys. Terry is here, here beside me where I can touch her and, turning to look at her, smile when she smiles. We have lighted our fire and laid on peats. The cave is warm. The rabbit I killed this morning beside Loch Coulter makes a fine smell as it braises in a pot.

This is our country. I feel, not as if strangers had intruded on our peace, but as if we had erred into another dangerous land, and now we have come home. Yesterday is a tale of a thousand years ago. For all my looking back, and recalling, it will not be brought near, but like a scene viewed through the wrong end of a telescope, its events are distant and impersonal, clear and crowded and far away. I cannot see myself in them as this thing myself that sits listening to the sounds of our frosty autumn day. I see pigmy figures toiling over hills, running, falling, one dying; they are not human; not I but a marionette effigy of myself am amongst them. I begin to speak about that man, and as I speak I try to feel horror. I should feel horror, and I feel none.

Terry says, ‘It was you or him, your life or his.’