‘Leave me alone I tell you!’ he broke in angrily. A weak delirious rage took him.

‘Where’s my gun?’ he shouted. ‘I know what you’re after, you want to steal my gun. Give it to me! you can’t rob me! let me go!’

‘We’ll never carry him so far,’ Terry said.

‘There’s no weight in him,’ I assured her. ‘Now help me up—’

He let himself be lifted without more show of resistance. We set out on our path. I carried him short distances at a time, and rested; when I was not enough revived by my halt we supported him between us with his legs dragging on the ground. I do not think he was ever rightly conscious. We circled the Farrow and Meall nan Eacan by the most level route we could plan. We saw from a long distance off that the fires in our gully were quenched. Our world was empty as of old.

We pieced together the disconnected fragments of his story that he babbled by the way; how he came farther and farther north from the blasted cities hunting for food; how his wife died, and he skulked in hiding every day.

No man was safe, no man had friends, no man helped another, every man’s hand was ready to strike.

So we came home to our cave and laid him in our bed and quickened his flickering pulse with a sup of the whisky Duncan brought.

‘I’ll fetch the haunches of that stag I killed,’ I promised. ‘To-morrow in the morning early. I know where it lies. We must have proper food, for him too. Rest a while,’ I besought Terry. ‘I’ll make a shake-down on the floor where you can sleep a little, I’ll watch—’

‘I can’t sleep,’ she answered. ‘Let me sit here, it won’t be for long, Hugh.’

I shook my head. ‘We came too late,’ I said.

‘When you bring home the stag, and he’s—he’s free, what then?’ she asked.

‘What then? How do you mean “What then”?’ I demanded.

‘Are we staying here?’

‘Where else can we go, Terry? We know the country here. You heard what he said, there’s danger every place.’

‘I’m not speaking about danger, Hugh.’

‘Well,’ I asked harshly, ‘what are you speaking about?’

‘I don’t need to answer that for you to know what I mean, do I, Hugh?’ she said. ‘How safe are we here, if safety’s all that counts? Oh, if we run and hide and kill like wolves at bay, we can escape what’s come to him, and them in the valley, for a time, for a few weeks—months!—years!—what does it matter how long we enjoy safety like that? Safety to become savages like the men we saw!’

‘And if we go do we avoid that?’ I cried. ‘What use will it serve to run our heads into danger?’