She was very careful that we should always throw out our slops a long way from the cave. I was tempted to fling down the dishwater at the very door of the cave but I was in the mood to nurse a grievance rather than air it. I walked out bare-headed. Terry came running after me with a coat.

‘Put this on, Hugh,’ she bade me.

‘I don’t want it,’ I told her, and walked a couple of hundred yards before I emptied the basin.

‘What were you saying about electric light?’ she asked brightly on my return. ‘Take off your jacket, boy, you’re wringing wet.’

‘I am not,’ I retorted.

‘Could we make a water-wheel?’ she asked after a pause.

‘What’s the good of talking about it?’ I wanted to know.

‘I would like to know, Hugh.’

All my resentment gathered itself against the plaintiveness of her voice.

‘And what’s the use of planning as if we were to be here for ever,’ I cried.

Christ, and if she died, what hell of trifles I’d inhabit, recalling such words.

‘That’s true,’ she agreed. ‘Is it still coming down?’

‘My peats will be washed away,’ I complained.

‘We can cut more.’

‘It’s easy for you to say that!’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s not your labour that’s wasting. If the rain came through the roof and messed up what you’ve done in the cave—’

‘The peats mayn’t be spoiled.’

‘How could they escape being spoiled? This weather may carry on for months. A pretty pickle we’ll be in then, without fuel for winter.’

All past and over, deep buried in the mind, ready to be remembered. Terry, I wish my heart would break and burst itself with grief for hurting you.

The weather faired this afternoon. We went out hoping to discover a cave or tented rocks near our own cave where our peats could be stowed in safety. The simplest course would be to build a stack either on the top of the rock near the moss or beside our cave but a stack large enough to outlast winter could not possibly be camouflaged with heathery turves; it is necessary to find a hiding-place.

The air, washed by the rain, was clear and fresh, and the farthest distances were bright in the sun; we looked through the limpid miles of air to the Cairngorms and the Monadhliahs; this air, like a sea of purifying waters, washed the green earth and the rocky hills. The ground was sopping wet; each shallow gully that we reached had its gurly torrent. We took off our shoes and stockings to splash barefoot through the burns and the velvet moss. I had never seen the country so verdant, under a bluer sky. The predominant yellows and browns of the moor seemed to have altered, as if the rain had changed them, or the air like glass altered their aspect.