our own stores before going on. As we reached Tyndrum, I looked up at the sky and decided that Carbridge had not been so far wrong the night before. ‘I’ll ask at the hotel whether they can have us here for a night.’
‘Oh, no, you won’t. We’re going to catch Carbridge and pass him without his knowing it. He can’t possibly be far in front of us now if he’s got poor Jane Minch hanging on to him. All we need is that short cut I mentioned.’
‘I had no idea you were so obstinate,’ I said.
‘I am not obstinate. I have made up my mind that we are going to get to Fort William before he does, that’s all. After that exhibition you made of yourself last night, the least you can do is to help me over racing him to the finish.’
‘I told him we were packing up at Kinlochleven,’ I said weakly. ‘I don’t know why he gets my goat to the extent he does. If he weren’t such a worm, perhaps his stupid talk and the liberties he tries to take with you wouldn’t rile me so much.’
‘It was you who took the liberties. You made me look an utter fool. Thank goodness that spotty little Minch girl wasn’t present. She might have thought you the big, bold hero.’
‘Freckles are not spots.’
‘Yes, they are. The other name for them is sunspots.’
I tried to laugh, but she had not finished, so I tried to divert her from her criticism of my conduct of the night before by quoting Shakespeare. ‘All right, they are sunspots,’ I said.
‘ “The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
These be rubies, fairy favours — ” ’
‘Oh, be quiet!’ she said impatiently. ‘What on earth induced you to behave like a jealous goat last night?’
‘You know as well as I do. I’m not prepared to stand by and watch one oaf trying to put an arm round you and listen to another oaf offering to take you to a hotel for the night.’
‘As for the first oaf, I could have managed him quite easily. I certainly didn’t need
‘He’s bigger than I am,’ I said.
At that her mood changed. She laughed. ‘I know what’s really the matter with you,’ she said. ‘It’s this enforced abstinence. However, we agreed on a celibate holiday and we’re sticking to it. I don’t suppose holding Jane Minch in your arms was much of a comfort, was it?’
‘You would be surprised,’ I said.
It was about half a dozen miles, or perhaps seven, from Tyndrum to Bridge of Orchy and we were following an old military road. It seemed easy going after some of the country we had passed through and we made good progress. We were not intending to break our journey at Bridge of Orchy anyway, but I still did not much like the look of the weather, although the view from the top of the hill had been fairly clear.
‘What are all those posts?’ asked Hera, after the road had descended from the hill.
‘Snow posts. Very handy guides in winter or if a Highland mist comes down.’ As though, by mentioning it, I had conjured it up, we had not reached the tiny settlement before a heavy mist blotted out everything except a short stretch of the road in front of us.
‘There’s a hotel at Bridge of Orchy,’ I said. ‘We’d better book in as soon as we get to it. If this mist means anything, we shall probably get rain, and I’m not walking in wet clothes if I can help it.’
‘Sugar baby!’
‘It’s you I’m thinking about.’
‘Yes,’ she said, to my surprise, ‘I really believe it was.’
As we approached Bridge of Orchy, the mist lifted and there were views which were not to be missed. We crossed a bridge and the railway came under the slopes of Beinn Doran on to an old road and then alongside a river. It was still easy walking and we loitered and I smoked while Hera gazed at the glen through which the river ran and the mountains which we were approaching.
We had spent so much time on this part of The Way that we decided to lunch at the Bridge of Orchy hotel before going on to Inveroran. The mist kept off, we had a fairly late and leisurely lunch and it was well past mid- afternoon by the time we took to The Way again and were headed for our overnight stop.
I took another look at the sky when we had left the hotel and did not much like what I saw, for the mountains were already beginning to be shrouded and I fancied that there was rain in the air. I began to wish that we had ended the day’s journey at Bridge of Orchy and felt that I ought to have insisted on this, but foolishly I had agreed to let Hera try her short cut. Anyway, it seemed more sensible to do the extra bit of walking on the one day and so reduce the next day’s stage to nine and a half miles instead of a dozen. Although Hera boasted of her fitness, I thought that mile after mile, day after day, was quite sufficient test of her capabilities.
For a long time that day our track had been running more or less beside the railway, but after Bridge of Orchy we knew we would lose both the railway and the main road. We expected to pick up the road at Kingshouse, for which we should be headed when we left Inveroran, but we would not see the railway again until we reached Fort William.
After about half an hour the mountains became nothing but looming, shadowy masses, amorphous giants, spectral, although not, so far, menacing. All the same, I began to appreciate the stories current in the Highlands of spooky manifestations and was only too willing to believe in witches, terrifying water-horses and all the rest of the legends and old wives’ tales.
I knew, too, that we must soon be on the fringes of Rannoch Moor, that wilderness of peat-bogs, water, heather and evil repute, but it was when I became aware that we must have covered a good deal more than the two and a half miles between Bridge of Orchy and Inveroran that it was borne in upon me that, with the mist thickening every minute, we must, at some time after leaving the village, have deviated from the signposted
