Clegs were the instruments of caution, and halted our thoughtless bravado. They appeared in the first days of July, before we finished working in the peat-moss. They did not punish me so viciously as they hurt Terry. Their bites raised lumps on her and their poison, together with the aversion they created, made her sick, while I took no great ill-effect from their venom. In spite of my immunity I dreaded them fully as much as she did. They filled me with loathing and, ridiculous as it seems, with fear. A single cleg aiming itself at my arm was enough to make me fling down whatever I had in my hand to beat the insect away with crazy gestures.

The clegs made the moss untenable through the day. Each peat as it dried seemed to make a resting-place for multitudes of the brutes, and at our approach they rose in ravenous swarms. We retreated and ventured out only at dusk when midges made a lesser nuisance, or in the cool of daybreak.

We had been exalted, too highly exalted as we had been too deeply depressed, when we emerged from the misery induced by our journey. The clegs tempered our new delight in the country and in our freedom. When they had driven us to work by night it occurred to us that we should never have been abroad through the day. We had been reckless and foolish. One grey morning, as I was lowering peats in the basket, I bethought me of the risks we had been running, and I hurried down to speak to Terry.

‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked anxiously, coming to meet me.

‘Terry!’ I cried, ‘what in the world have we been thinking about, these past weeks? Some one must have seen us. It’s just dawned on me—I was thinking about the clegs forcing us to work at night—we ought to have been working by night.’

‘I had the very same thought,’ she returned. ‘But if we were seen we’d know by now—’

‘If we weren’t seen we’ve been lucky beyond our deserts,’ I declared.

Now everything we had done seemed conspicuous and rash. I insisted on thatching the peat-stack with turves, although anyone who came near enough to discern the stack must inevitably find our cave. We have laughed since these careful days at our excess of caution. We broke down the sides of our peat-moss to make my excavation look as much like the untidy work of nature as possible. We deferred bringing fir roots home until we found a secure hiding-place for them. Terry plotted a strict routine of hours, for meals and work and sleep.