I puzzled over this till I realized that in all my Cotswold pictures a figure kept going and coming—­a young girl with a cloud of gold hair and the strong, slim grace of a boy, who had sung ‘Cherry Ripe’ in a moonlit garden.  Up on that hillside I understood very clearly that I, who had been as careless of women as any monk, had fallen wildly in love with a child of half my age.  I was loath to admit it, though for weeks the conclusion had been forcing itself on me.  Not that I didn’t revel in my madness, but that it seemed too hopeless a business, and I had no use for barren philandering.  But, seated on a rock munching chocolate and biscuits, I faced up to the fact and resolved to trust my luck.  After all we were comrades in a big job, and it was up to me to be man enough to win her.  The thought seemed to brace any courage that was in me.  No task seemed too hard with her approval to gain and her companionship somewhere at the back of it.  I sat for a long time in a happy dream, remembering all the glimpses I had had of her, and humming her song to an audience of one black-faced sheep.

On the highroad half a mile below me, I saw a figure on a bicycle mounting the hill, and then getting off to mop its face at the summit.  I turned my Ziess glasses on to it, and observed that it was a country policeman.  It caught sight of me, stared for a bit, tucked its machine into the side of the road, and then very slowly began to climb the hillside.  Once it stopped, waved its hand and shouted something which I could not hear.  I sat finishing my luncheon, till the features were revealed to me of a fat oldish man, blowing like a grampus, his cap well on the back of a bald head, and his trousers tied about the shins with string.

There was a spring beside me and I had out my flask to round off my meal.

‘Have a drink,’ I said.

His eye brightened, and a smile overran his moist face.

‘Thank you, sir.  It will be very warrm coming up the brae.’

‘You oughtn’t to,’ I said.  ’You really oughtn’t, you know.  Scorching up hills and then doubling up a mountain are not good for your time of life.’

He raised the cap of my flask in solemn salutation.  ’Your very good health.’  Then he smacked his lips, and had several cupfuls of water from the spring.

‘You will haf come from Achranich way, maybe?’ he said in his soft sing-song, having at last found his breath.

’Just so.  Fine weather for the birds, if there was anybody to shoot them.’

’Ah, no.  There will be few shots fired today, for there are no gentlemen left in Morvern.  But I wass asking you, if you come from Achranich, if you haf seen anybody on the road.’

From his pocket he extricated a brown envelope and a bulky telegraph form.  ‘Will you read it, sir, for I haf forgot my spectacles?’

It contained a description of one Brand, a South African and a suspected character, whom the police were warned to stop and return to Oban.  The description wasn’t bad, but it lacked any one good distinctive detail.  Clearly the policeman took me for an innocent pedestrian, probably the guest of some moorland shooting-box, with my brown face and rough tweeds and hobnailed shoes.