I made heavy progress with my loads through the mire and stones to Loch Coulter. Stumbling and falling, saving my precious luggage at the expense of my hands and knees, I went back and fore, half-asleep though I kept a straight course. We had not thought about making the parcels easy to carry; we had omitted to wrap things that would break in blankets or clothing to protect them. I had even forgotten to leave food unwrapped and easy to get at. At length cock-grouse, whose wings I had heard many a time when I disturbed them in the gloom, commenced to hail the approach of day. Our stuff was hidden safely amongst heather in a jungle of young birch at the head of Loch Coulter. It was impossible to carry it to the cave in darkness and when light came I was too tired to lift another burden. I dragged myself up the hill to the cave with a couple of blankets and a dry loaf. I was too tired to eat. I was too tired to sleep. Yet I did not wake. The moist dark cavern lightened from the east, and the sun rose, and reached the south, and went down, while I lay waiting.

Terry came to the meeting-place at ten o’clock.

‘We must hurry,’ I said. ‘We have to get rid of the car. I hope it won’t be as dark as it was last night. I put my feet in every hole between here and Loch Coulter. Could you drive the car to Dalwhinnie and up the side of Loch Ericht until you find a steep place, and run it over into the loch? That would hide it safely. Then walk back here and wait for me, if I’m not already waiting.’

‘You’re wet, you’re shivering,’ she said. ‘When had you food last? I’m not going to leave you, Hugh; I’m staying with you.’

I was loath to send her away from me again, and I agreed that we could hide the car in a gravel pit for two or three days. There might be things on it which would prove useful, once we had time to look about us.

Although we had less to carry this night we were both dead-beat. The nervous excitement and the anger which had goaded us so far were failing; we trudged in leaden gloomy silence, lacking energy even to speak when we tripped over tussocks, or walked into bogs. Yet, bereft of elation and anger as we were, weariness itself seemed to carry us on. Like men in despair who may as well struggle forward as yield, we laboured on our journeys; the dawn came in grey and misty; we could hear, but not see, water flowing to the loch, and waking birds.