We found no cave but Terry discovered an enormous boulder with a vertical face turned towards the cliff. We clambered to the top of the boulder where heather and grass had found root, to survey our realm. Our bare legs dangled over the edge. It was so still and clear that we could hear lambs bleating in the meadows of the Spey.

‘Perhaps they’re going to clip,’ I said to Terry.

‘Did you ever hear anything so clear and far away?’ she asked.

The noise of bleating came up to us from the distance like the imagined sounds of a story.

‘Like the goat in Daudet’s story,’ I said. ‘Do you remember when the wolf came, and every noise that the kid knew was quiet, and its master gave up blowing his horn. “Come home! come home!”’

‘I’ve heard rooks like that,’ she said, ‘in the trees in a valley.’

Our ears, which the noise of rain and streams and wind had dulled, began to listen for the birds and beasts, and like a wave the cry of whaups, the calling grouse, each sound that rose from the moor or descended from the lift, welled in upon us and we listened with all our souls; our hearts were freed from their discontent by the large harmony of freedom that our neighbours made around us in this place.

‘We talk quite casually now about spending winter here,’ Terry said after a long silence.

‘If we build our stack against the up side of this rock,’ I said, ‘it would be hidden from everywhere unless some one came right up to the cliff, and in that case we ourselves would be seen. It’s strange that we haven’t seen a shepherd amongst the sheep.’

‘I can’t worry or care about anything on a day like this,’ she answered.

‘I feel as if I had lived all my life here,’ I said.

‘I was never happier than I am just now—it’s wrong of me,’ she said, ‘it’s wicked to be so happy.’

‘What’s wrong in it?’ I asked fiercely. ‘Great God, what hell is in the world when happiness is a crime? There’s hope for the world that has happiness in it. If it was all hate and rage it would go like a heap of corruption mouldering itself to nothing with its own rottenness.’

‘Other people deserve happiness and haven’t it,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Hugh—you won’t be very angry with me—you won’t think I’m silly—’

I shook my head and answered, ‘Not this day, Terry.’

She smiled at that.

‘And other days?’ she inquired.

‘What were you going to say?’ I asked.

‘Hugh—I’d like to see our house. It’s a foolish whim—and we’ve so much to do—’

‘Why do you want to see the house?’ I demanded.