I killed a grouse on a hillock right underneath the cave. Warm as it was we plucked it; Terry stuffed it with oatmeal and chopped onions and roasted it for four hours on a fire of turf. In spite of the long cooking the grouse was tough.

‘We mustn’t let this happen again,’ Terry said severely. ‘We must pull ourselves together, Hugh. Don’t burn the feathers, boy, they may come in useful.’

We have recalled our reckless carelessness on that day many times, killing a grouse in broad daylight and cooking it for a whole afternoon on a smoky fire. We were so hungry that the world might overlook us and we would not have heeded.

The chances were all against our being seen, even if there had been any one in the neighbourhood. We were absolutely screened from above. The cliff bulging over the cave, hid most of the gorge as well as our refuge from any one looking down from its summit. The cave itself lay in a hollow between two ridges of flat slatey boulders. Thus on the west, where we made our fire, we could crouch unseen from every direction except directly opposite on the other side of the ravine. The sun shone full on that face for most of the day, lighting it so plainly that we could distinguish the least movement. It was so precipitous that a man coming into it would spend most of his time watching his footing, and he could spare scanty attention for our hillside. Beyond Loch Coulter the moor extending in a mossy expanse had only one practicable path which it was easy for us to watch. As for the smoke of our fire, we purposely heaped on smoky fuel one evening and went down into the gorge to find how noticeable it was. The smoke blended so well with the cliff behind it that we distinguished the one from the other with difficulty though we knew where to look and what we were looking for.

Our next care was to survey our cave. This den, for as yet it deserved no better name, was twenty-two feet long. The opening at the west end was ten feet wide at the base and eight feet high. From the west end to the centre the cave kept these dimensions, but from the centre to the other end it was much smaller. The leaning slab of rock which composed the outer wall had cracked at the centre of its length, probably because of the curve in the cliff and fallen in a little. So the cave bowed inwards from the centre until the east exit was a narrow aperture something over five feet high and three feet wide at the base. Of course, the cave was roughly triangular throughout its length.