‘Every one his own way,’ he said gently.

‘When will we see each other again?’ I asked in a strained voice.

He looked at me fixedly and said, ‘Be good to her, Hugh.’

All at once he seized my hand and shook it; he bent down and kissed Terry’s cheek, and said, ‘You must not come farther,’ and turned and walked away.

We stood side by side, gazing after him without a word to say.

‘I never saw a man walk so beautifully,’ Terry whispered. ‘He knows he’ll never come back,’ she said, speaking with difficulty.

He reached the fence and crossed it, his tall figure vanished in a dip of the road.

‘We’ll never seen him again!’ she cried. ‘Oh! oh! why should it happen! why should it be!’ And she fell to crying and sobbing.

I let her alone. I could not sweeten the moment for myself, far less comfort another. I saw Duncan climb from the dip in the road. He halted his stride for the first time since he left us. He stood by the roadside fence and bending over it with both hands on the top wire he looked across the moor. A hare that he had lifted got on its hind legs on the top of a hillock to stare at us. We waited a long time, watching until Duncan returned to his way. He showed no sign of seeing us. We also went back the way we came.

We have gone over and over every moment of his visit, from the instant of his arrival out of the morning mist in the gorge beneath our cave. He came on us by surprise. We had been carrying fir roots to the cave from the head of Loch Coulter since dawn. We were resting half-way up the steep ascent from the gully when Duncan showed himself on the edge of the mist below us. I had as ever my rifle with me. It was to my shoulder and trained on the approaching figure before I realized what I was doing. It comes to my shoulder automatically now when I see a moving creature, but this was the first time I aimed it with deadly intent at a man.

We have rehearsed every word he spoke, and all we said to him. We told him what we had done, showing him this clever makeshift, asking him to admire that other thing. He sat and smiled, and kept silent; we were afraid to ask outright, to discover what he knew. When he spoke we listened with bated breath, dreading to discover what he dreaded to tell, and never told. We listen still, and look after him, towards the way he has gone. It is not difficult to remember every word he spoke. When they are told, and told again, we recall his looks, his eyes, the fashion of his silence.