rds all the time, my
dinner-jacket carefully buttoned in case a gleam of moonlight on my
shirt-front should give me away at a critical moment. It was a rocky
and difficult climb, and I soon regretted that I had not taken the
bridle path to Glasnabinnie and made my way boldly up the bed of the
burn. However, it was too late to turn back, and eventually, after one
or two false steps and stumbles, I succeeded in reaching a spot from
which I could obtain a good view of the hut. No, there was no light
there, no sign of movement at all. I decided to work my way round to
the other side and then, if I continued to get no satisfaction, to
descend to the house. The windows of the hut, or smoking-room, as the
reader will no doubt remember, extended the whole length of the
structure; and surely, I thought, if there were a light in the place
it would be bound to be visible. I edged round the face of a steep
crag, floundered across the stream between the two falls, getting
myself soaked above the knees as I did so, and crouched among the
heather on the other side of the building. No, there was no one there,
the place was deserted. I knelt down and peered about me listening
intently.

Not a sound greeted my expectant ear save the incessant rumble of the
falls. Then as I turned my attention to the house itself and looked
down the course of the burn to Glasnabinnie, I could scarcely suppress
a cry of astonishment. For there below me, moving to and fro between
the house and the hut, was a constant procession of small lights, like
a slowly moving stream of glow-worms, twenty or thirty yards apart. I
was rooted to the spot. What could it mean? Was this another weird
natural manifestation, or was it, as was much more likely, a couple of
dozen men bearing lights? Yes, that was it, men bearing lights--and
what else besides? Men don't climb up and down steep watercourses in
the night for the sake of giving an impromptu firework display to an
unexpected visitor, I told myself. There was only one thing to do, and
that was to investigate the matter and chance what might happen to me.
I crept down to the hut, and lay on my face among the heather and
listened. Here and there a mumble of voices, now and then a subdued
shout, apparently an order to be carried out by the mysterious
light-bearers, broken occasionally by the shrill call of a gull,
conveyed nothing to me that I could not see. I looked up at the hut.
No, there was no one there, and the w