We cut our peats from a deep bank of moss which lies in a pocket of rock on the hill-top above our cave. The wind is sweet on that high eminence. It comes from the sea.

If we take things more casually now, it is not because difficulties have vanished or diminished. We have hard problems to solve every day. Some difficulties increase. Though I have become a better stalker, though I have studied the morning mist in the corries until I know almost every wind that blows, though I go after deer without the exaggerated caution which used to defeat me more often than it aided me, stalking is no mere mechanical occupation like a visit to a killing-house to slaughter a sheep. I have spent many long days on the hill since April passed and come home empty. During April I did not go far afield for meat. I went out at dawn and hid to leeward of some gully through which the deer passed on their return from the moss-crop. In a very short time the deer grew scary, and it dawned on us that we were very short-sighted. We had already frightened the neighbourhood by our mere presence; if we continued to kill beasts within a mile or two of the cave they would forsake the locality.

‘I’ll have to go farther out,’ I told Terry. ‘Grouse are so wild already they get up half a mile before I come near them, and as for deer they watch us from the skyline and bolt at our least movement. We’ll make this bit of ground a sanctuary, and never kill inside it unless there’s dire need. We may not want to go far out for our meat when winter comes.’

‘Must you go a great distance?’ Terry asked anxiously.

‘Farther every day I’m afraid. As summer comes on and the flies arrive the deer will move right up to the summits—you mustn’t worry, honey. I’ll be quite safe.’