Great Northern?. Arthur Ransome

him go,” said Dorothea.

      “We’ll explore along the slopes of the Northern Rockies,” said Titty, glancing up the valley and then at the chart. “We’ll come back past Upper and Lower Lochs. They’ll show us the way to the beck … burn. And we’ll follow the burn past the other side of the Hump until it comes to the waterfall and our cove. “

      “Dick,” said Dorothea, “are you going to stay at those lochs all the time?”

      “I expect so,” said Dick. “There’s sure to be some birds, even if there aren’t any Divers.”

      “Good,” said Titty. “We’ll pick you up on our way back to the ship.”

      “But don’t wait for us if they sound the foghorn. Go straight back to the Sea Bear,” said Dorothea. “Only do listen for it … if he’s watching birds, you know …” She looked at the others. They laughed. They both knew that if Dick was looking at anything, even if it was only a caterpillar, you could shout at him from close by without his hearing.

      “I’ll hear all right,” said Dick, putting his notebook in his pocket. “Good-bye.”

      “Look here,” said Roger. “Even if somebody else is using this place, we’ll never find a better one for eating our grub.”

      “Eat yours with us, Dick, and get it over,” said Dorothea.

      “I can eat it going along.”

      “Susan’ll be very fierce if you forget it,” said Titty.

      “Bother birds,” said Roger. “Adventures are much better.”

      But Dick was already over the edge of the mound, and hurrying on his way to the lochs, thinking of the time that he had already had to waste.

      Dorothea watched him. Now and again, as he dropped into a dip in the uneven ground, she lost sight of him, and then saw him again as he came up on the other side of it, moving quickly slantwise down the slopes of the long ridge that sheltered the valley from the north.

      She turned to find that the other two explorers had emptied their knapsacks and were opening their packets of sandwiches.

      “Roger’s quite right,” said Titty. “Going a long way, it’s easier to carry your grub inside.”

      Dorothea wriggled out of the straps of her own knapsack and sat down beside them. In that hollow on the top of the old Pict-house, she thought, an escaping prisoner could hide from his pursuers. One moment, before sitting down, she could see for miles, out over the sea or up the valley to the mountains. The next, sitting on the ground, she could see nothing but sky and the short blades of grass stirring against the blue just above the level of her head. “Invisible to all but the eagle, the fugitive rested and was safe,” she murmured to herself.

      “What?” said Roger, taking a bite from a sandwich.

      Dorothea started. “Nothing,” she said. “I was only thinking how secret this place is.”

      “Listen!” said Titty. “Listen!”

      “Bagpipes!” said Roger.

      Faintly, from far away, the skirl of bagpipes drifted down the wind.

      They jumped up.

      “People … quite near …” said Titty.

      “I can’t see anyone,” said Dorothea.

      “You can’t tell,” said Titty. “Somebody may be seeing you.”

      “Come down,” said Roger. “Come down, and then you can’t be seen even if there’s somebody watching.”

      They dropped and for a moment waited silently, listening for the pipes. They could still hear them.

      “It’s the other side of the Northern Rockies,” said Titty. “A road goes over where that gap is.”

      “There’s a robber castle just over the top of the range,” said Dorothea.

      DICK GOES OFF TO THE LOCHS

      “Conspicuous house,” said Titty, looking at the sketch on the little chart.

      “Far enough away, anyhow,” said Roger, and took another bite.

CHAPTER V

      “WE ARE BEING STALKED!”

      THAT FAR AWAY skirl of bagpipes had come to an end.

      With little in their knapsacks but their empty lemonade bottles and all solid rations except chocolate stowed inside them for easy carrying, the three explorers looked out from the top of the old Pict-house and searched the skyline of the ridge before them. The gap in its rocky outline, and glimpses of a cart track winding up to it through the heather, told them where the house was that had been seen from far away when the Sea Bear had been sailing towards the coast the day before.

      “I’d like to see what sort of a house it is,” said Dorothea. “I’m sure it ought to be a castle.”

      “I bet it’s where that biscuit box comes from,” said Roger.

      “We ought to know the worst,” said Titty. “And if we go carefully up to that gap, we ought to be able to see without being seen.”

      Watching the skyline, they dropped down from the hill-top and then began to climb again.

      “It doesn’t look much used,” said Roger when they came to the cart track.

      “We could pretend it isn’t there,” said Titty.

      “But why?” said Dorothea. “At dead of night, with the hoofs of their horses muffled to make no noise, the smugglers come this way over the hills. A light blinks out at sea. Boats land and are gone again before the morning and when the sun comes up the smugglers are far away and everything is like it is now.”

      “Anyway,” said Roger, “it’s a lot easier walking on it. Come on.”

      “We oughtn’t to turn back without knowing what’s there,” said Titty, as much to herself as to the others.

      They knew almost at once. As soon as they were in the gap, with heather slopes to right and left, they could see down into the country on the further side of the ridge.

      “Native settlement,” said Titty at once.

      “I told you it must be a castle,” said Dorothea.

      “Don’t let them see you,” said Roger.

      They were looking at a group of low thatched buildings, cottages, barns and sheds. Just beyond these was the “conspicuous house” of the chart and, though it was hardly big enough to be a castle, Roger and Titty were not inclined to quarrel with Dorothea about it. It was built into the steep side of the hill and looked down on a bay of the sea. In front of it was a stone terrace, level with the ground at one side but with a ten or twelve foot drop below it to the rocky face of the hill. It was a two-storey house, but was turned into something as good as any castle by a turret with a battlemented top that rose high above its steeply sloping roofs.

      “Get down,” said Roger, and dropped to the ground.

      But Titty and Dorothea were still standing, looking through the gap at a world very different from the desolate valley they had left. It was different because it was inhabited. Far away on the slopes of the hills that fell away towards the sea there were more of the queer low cottages, like those only a hundred yards or so in front of them, with their rough thatched roofs, the thatching held down by ropes weighted with big stones. Here and there on the dark slopes were little groups of men and women cutting peat.

      “Let me