Her cheeks were cold like ice. She collapsed into my arms. I took off her clothes and put her to bed. She was asleep before I covered her with blankets. I sat by the hammock, staring at her, putting out my hand to touch her. I grew sick as I thought of the death in life that would be my portion, lacking her. All the air in the world was too little for the gusty suspiration of my panic breath. Fear’s constricting fingers gripped me in their hold. She wakened once, roused by my presence beside her; she said in a gentle voice, ‘I was sleeping, Hugh.’ She smiled and said, ‘Aren’t you coming to bed, Hugh? You look tired.’

16 AUGUST

WE STAYED AWAKE throughout the day on the Twelfth. Only our ears’ expectancy kept us from falling asleep. It was a warm drowsy day; the heat of the yellowing sun, the sound of bumble-bees, the smell of heather in flower, lulled us and drugged our senses half to sleep save our ears that harkened through the hours for sounds that did not come.

‘The first day of autumn,’ Terry breathed, interrupting a long silence.

‘The last day of summer,’ I returned.

‘Och, no,’ she said, ‘summer will have plenty of last days yet. We’ve had rare luck in the weather, Hugh.’

‘We couldn’t have managed if the year was wet,’ I agreed.

‘It’s too dry now. The hill’s like tinder. A spark would put it in a blaze. We must be careful with the ashes, Terry. This would be a hot corner if the rank heather round about caught fire.’

We looked involuntarily to the east where we had seen heavy smoke rising in the past few days, as if from a forest fire in the region of Rothiemurchus.

‘It couldn’t have been woods on fire,’ I said, reverting to an oft-discussed topic. ‘Or it would have been burning still.’

‘The smoke has vanished,’ Terry agreed. ‘There might have been rain there though we had none.’

I shook my head.

‘Not with these blue skies,’ I told her. ‘If it doesn’t rain soon I needn’t bother going out to stalk. Even as it is I can scarcely come near stags for the noise of the moss crackling under my feet.’

In the late afternoon Terry voiced our mutual thought.

‘I haven’t heard a single shot,’ she said.

‘Not one,’ I concurred.

‘I’ve been waiting all day ready to be angry,’ she confessed with a smile.

‘Angry?’ I asked.

‘If I heard shooting, I’d be angry to think men should go out for sport, at such a time.’

‘They went out to kill grouse in the last war,’ I informed her.

‘Did they? Hadn’t they plenty of killing?’