When the hammock was erected we made a mantel-shelf over the fireplace by laying six rowan saplings side by side from one wall of the cave to the other. They made a fairly level shelf and I was pleased with it but Terry did not rest content until she sewed the relics of our car hood into a narrow strip long enough to cover the shelf. She went out furtively leaving me to arrange our teapot, my watch, the tin which served for a tea-caddy, and a variety of other small things on the mantelpiece. She returned in a few minutes with her arms full of bell-heather, rowan-blossom, a few sprays from a gean tree that we found growing in a sheltered corner by Loch Coulter, and crow-foot, buttercups, and wild clover from a grassy plot that had once been occupied by a house of which the ruins were still visible. Probably it had been a summer-shieling. We were very fond of that plot of green. We often wondered about the people who had lived there. Terry filled milk-tins with water to hold her flowers and arranged her vases on the shelf.

‘You should have fetched some nettles too,’ I said, half- mocking.

‘That’s cruel of you, Hugh,’ she said in a hurt voice.

‘We could eat them. People used them for a vegetable in the last war.’ We admired each other’s work for a little while. Then I made loops of wire to hang from the rafters and hold the rifles and our tools. While Terry was stowing away our tins of food on the wall-ends of the mantelshelf, and suspending dishes and pans and clothes from the rafters, I sawed the four posts we had taken from Ardverikie to equal lengths of a little less than three feet. Using these posts for legs and the straightest branches I could find for ends and sides I constructed the rough skeleton of a table. We were at a loss for a top to our table. I suggested a deer skin, but Terry doubted whether our curing was effective enough for such an important purpose. Eventually we found a broad thin slab of rock which I trimmed roughly and laid on the framework. Our table was ready.

Chairs were our next thought. We had the cushions from the car, two front cushions and a long seat from the back. They were comfortable but if they were laid on the ground they were much too low. When I proposed to make stools of turves Terry pointed out that they would make the place dirty and they could not be moved from place to place. I agreed very reluctantly, and in the end we contrived serviceable though shaky stools from birch saplings.