Our cave was gradually assuming the appearance of a dwelling. With a good fire burning and the milk-tin lamp shedding its light from the mantelshelf, it was both gay and snug. The floor was strewn with deer-skins; we sat down a hundred times a day, on our own chairs by the fire, to regard our achievements. When the door was closed with deer-skin curtains no draught entered, whatever the wind’s direction. The small wood violets that Terry gathered every day, even when rain fell and mist covered the land, made a faint perfume.

All the while we were busy with these improvements the rain kept falling, and mist drew closer every day. At first I was pleased with the weather. I had work indoors to occupy me. The wind and the rain came up so thunderously out of the west, the waters rose with such wild haste, I was exhilarated, I kept running from admiring the cave, which did not let in a drop of water, to the doorway whence I could watch the storm sweep down the gorge beneath me. Our little trickle of a stream was now a cascade that sprayed us with mist when we went near to fetch water. I loved to stand beside the loud fall, and when I was wet to strip my clothes from me and dry them in front of our fire.

I had made a basin of clay to catch the runnel of our stream and make it easy to lift water even in dry weather. It survived the first violent flood. The burn came down so full that it overleaped the trough to fall in gouts and thunder yards away from the foot of the cliff. Then the rain abated, yielding to a steady drizzle, and the burn went down; its force came directly on my cistern and washed it away in a few moments. I had no more work to do indoors. Terry was busy cooking, and cleaning and drying wet clothes. I was idle and miserable. When I ventured out to view my peats or to fetch in firewood my clothes were wetted but never soaked. They had to be taken off and dried as if they were thoroughly wet. The cave was perpetually festooned with my steaming clothes; their smell pervaded the place; we could not move without brushing our faces against dank cloth.

I was full of ambitious plans for a day or two.

‘We could easily make a water-wheel with one of the back-wheels of the car,’ I told Terry, ‘couple it up to the dynamo, and give ourselves electric light.’

‘We could do that later,’ she said in her most matter-of-fact voice. ‘Do you mind running out with this basin of dirty water?’