Following in the footsteps of the fugitive Prince, the three children trailed slowly behind Wiggy and the teacher, as they rounded the grey shoulder of Culvain and descended towards Glen Camgarry. Although the morning was half-gone, their bodies and muscles felt tired and lethargic, after the previous day's soaking and a night on rough floorboards in Glen Mallie.

Light rain was still falling in prolonged showers and socks felt moist inside walking-boots, the ground supple from the overnight storm; the earth, the air smelling of rain; the heather spraying them as they brushed against it. And Camgarry below them, quiet and sombre, beneath hillsides reaching up into greyness and mist. A forlorn, beautiful emptiness.

The two men traced a way towards the valley-bottom, talking less often now, with longer intervals between conversations, falling into the slower rhythm and silences of the wilderness.

The children were chatting inconsequentially, trailing, less urgent than they had been on the previous day.

'I could murder a plate of bacon and eggs,' said Alasdair.

'You're always hungry,' Roberta complained.

'With fried bread, mushrooms, sausages, tomatoes.'

'Some good you would be as a Jacobite on the run.'

'It would have been alright,' Alasdair continued, 'if Wiggy hadn't burnt the porridge. Gordon only left him with it for a minute.'

Harry was sucking a sweet from a secret store in one of his damp trouser pockets. He took the sweet out discreetly.

'That was brilliant!' he laughed. 'Did you see the smoke, Al? He ran through the door like a maniac. He was in a right benny...'

'Yes, but it was dreadful to wash,' said Alasdair. 'What's the best way to clean burnt pots, Roberta?'

'Don't ask me,' she protested.

'Heather,' said Harry bluntly. 'Scrapes the bottoms clean.'

They traipsed on around the turn of the hill.

'Still,' said Alasdair eventually, 'I'm glad the Wigster's come along.'

'It gives Gordon someone else to talk to...' his sister added.

'What do you think, Harry?' the gentle boy continued, trying as usual to involve his friend. 'Are you glad Wiggy's joined us?'

Harry just shrugged his shoulders. He was studying the glen, eyes ranging north and south, alert, like a fox sniffing the air for a scent : watchful, cautious, separate.

'Anyway,' continued Roberta, 'Mr Gordon deserves the company.'

'He's decent enough, isn't he?' said Alasdair, checking his sister's loyalty. He waited a while for the answer.

'Yes, he's alright,' she said in the end. 'Alright for a teacher.'

'Bet The Headmaster would like to see us now,' Harry rasped. 'He'd go ballistic if he was with us now.'

On that constructive thought they carried on in silence. Harry retrieved the sweet from his pocket, and put it furtively into his mouth while the others were looking away. He pressed on faster, leaving the brother and sister behind on the hillside. They exchanged few words.

'Are your socks wet?' Alasdair asked.

'You could take them off and squeeze the water out,' his sister suggested.

'No, I'll wait till I get to the stream down there.'

They jumped across some wet peat.

'Just think, Roberta - we could be at home having a warm bath, clean socks, dry clothes...'

'Would you want to be?' she asked bluntly.

'No.'

A silence. Empty.

When they got to the burn at the foot of the glen, the others were waiting, resting on boulders with the rucksacks strewn by their sides.

'Is it lunch yet?' Alasdair asked.

'You feeling hungry already?' Wiggy enquired cheerfully. 'You've only just had breakfast!' Alasdair looked at his friends, and held his tongue. Surely it must be midday by now.

'Where are we on the map?' he asked.

'This is Glen Camgarry,' said the teacher.'It must have been something of a resistance outpost in 1746. Because it's so remote, the Jacobites used it as a meeting-point after Culloden. We know they kept caches of food and extra supplies. And on his way to the ships, Prince Charlie came over the hills with Lochiel, to rendezvous here with Cluny Macpherson.'

'Doesn't look like anything could live here, does it?' said Wiggy, sniffing, and casting his gaze up and down the lonely river. It seemed wholly desolate. 'Here! Do you want a biscuit?'

Roberta took one and lay back on a boulder. Alasdair devoured his at once, his brow sweaty, and hair soaked - his young face looking, almost, pretty.

Harry had wandered off downstream towards a thicket of small birch trees, where the undergrowth grew tall and wet, and piles of boulders seemed to have tumbled down the mountain and spilled out across the glen.

Gordon and the Maclean children munched biscuits - 'We must save some for Harry' Alasdair added - and they imagined where treasure could be hidden in a glen like this. They were wearing cagoules, but Wiggy just wore his jacket, with a scarf wrapped over his head. His kilt looked wet and heavy.

'There was a hole in the roof where I slept,' he was saying. 'I felt drops of rain running down my neck all night.'

'Were you cold without a sleeping bag?' Roberta asked sympathetically.

'Got a bit chilly towards dawn,' he sniffed. His eyes widened and he smiled. 'Still, I doubt if I would have slept anyway - not with your snoring!' He leant towards her.

Roberta felt a thrill course through her at this personal insult and his kind, sparkly eyes.

'I don't snore,' she insisted boldly.

'You do too. I've never heard anything like it.'

'Get stuffed!' she shouted, jokingly, and threw the remains of her biscuit at him. He could have it back.

Wiggy was going to say something else, but just then the remote voice of Harry cried out from deep in the undergrowth.

'Hi! Mr Gordon! Come and have a look at this!' Their heads turned, as if synchronised, and they peered to locate him.

'There!' said Gordon. 'By that old rowan tree.'

Alasdair and Roberta ran and leapt through the heather to the deep scrub where Harry was just visible. Wiggy ran too, almost child-like with excitement, curious and involved. Only Gordon walked, and as he drew up he found them circled around a high bank of heather.

'Look!' said Alasdair keenly.

'I just pulled away this stuff and...' Harry pointed, holding back the scrub with a stick.

There, emerging from the undergrowth, were the perfectly defined outlines of a stone-wall. He had uncovered an overgrown ruin.

'It's an old shieling!' exclaimed Philip Gordon, surprised by what the boy had overturned. Working together, they pulled aside more heather and fallen branches to reveal the clear outline of a forgotten home.

'What's this?' asked Roberta.

It was the fallen lintel of a doorway.

Here at Camgarry they had stumbled upon the trail of the Jacobites : the remnants of a lost way of life. Hundreds of years of civilisation and then...

'What do you suppose happened?' Wiggy said to Gordon.

'Government troops. In the aftermath they must have set it alight and cleared the glen.'

'And the people? The children?'

Gordon blinked.

In the grey glen, by the quiet waters, it was as if they had stepped back 250 years. No-one had seen this home for over a century - or even two. And now, in the thrill and drama of pulling back nature's growth, here it was once more, as if it had only been left the day before yesterday. Gordon couldn't help feeling a tingle, a sensation, as if someone was stepping on his grave. These lives, these people : so close, as if time was just an illusion from which one awoke, to find past merged with present... these lives and people : and yet disappeared, vanished forever.

'That tree!' he said, pointing at the gnarled rowan which overhung the ruins and had broken through the gable at one end. 'The Celts used to plant a rowan to bring luck to the house...'

'It didn't bring much luck to this one,' said Roberta.

She was standing at the fallen doorway.

'Prince Charlie must have stood just where you are now, when he arrived at this home.'

'He didn't bring much luck either, did he?' she continued.

'Come on. Let's see if we can find the treasure,' said Alasdair boyishly. For half an hour he and Harry ducked in and out of trees up and down from the ruin, wondering at every moment if they might uncover the golden coins. Philip Gordon went with them, and Wiggy sat down on a rock and wrung out his socks. Brown peaty water trickled down the length of his arms.

Roberta seemed quieted; still. She stole around the ruin, gently, softly, imagining the sounds and laughter which once inhabited it; feeling the mossy bark of the contorted rowan; and the damp stones and earth where the heather had been tugged at, uprooted, and rudely pulled away.

Gordon finally called the boys back and pointed down river toward thicker woods and Loch Arkaig.

Wiggy called Harry over and did up his laces once more.

'He's always doing this to me!' the boy complained, helpless, perplexed.

'That's because I don't fancy carrying a boy with a broken leg.'

'Now we're really on the trail,' said Gordon. 'So shall we get going?'

They lifted on rucksacks, except for Roberta. Wiggy had been carrying hers. He remained seated on the boulder and seemed reluctant to go. He indicated that he wanted a few minutes' peace on his own to think.

Gordon and the children pressed on into the deeper wooded slopes that dropped down steeply to the Loch. After a few minutes, in among the birch trees, Roberta stopped and said 'I'll catch you up,' and soon their voices seemed distant, remote, until they disappeared altogether.

The intelligent dark-haired girl continued to listen, passively. She had a capacity to respond intuitively, to drift towards awareness and away from thought.

The trickling of drops of water down twigs, the streaking of rain through her wet hair : she noticed them, momentarily. It was very quiet. She felt a softness around her in these woods, and within herself. It was a kind of quieting, an inner acceptance of stillness and wholeness. Of stillness all around her. Her socks, her pants felt wet : the outer world encroaching upon her inner world. She looked round about : mosses and rock, shadow on tree bark, birds hidden somewhere among the dappled leaves. It was as if nature was waiting, watching - like a lurking. She felt a lurking within her too.

A wind got up and droplets of rain pattered softly to the ground close about her. She was passive and receptive. In the sigh of the leaves down the glen she thought she could hear the sound of children calling in the woods. Was it Alasdair and Harry? It was as if small beckoning voices were encroaching at a subconscious level, crying 'Here we are, here we are' : encroaching upon the merely controlled intellect, whispering 'We are here too, as you are, we are here too.' She let it all pass over her, open, without questioning.

It was like a stirring, a waking within her : the advances of wild nature almost amorous, such was her awareness of beauty, of physical presence, so insistent and present its demand. And where dead leaves lay, and memories gathered, an awareness of cold nature, savage but not horrific, came to her, as clear as a dead man's face.

She walked deeper in among the twigs and lichen-garlanded branches, feeling them flick and brush gently against her face. She traced the pattern of bark with her hand and felt its touch; felt, too, her own body and its actuality. And it pleased her. Gave her joy.

Her instincts told her to let go, to acquiesce, to accede to nature - to her nature, nature within her. She felt gentleness and savagery encroach and she welcomed this feeling; wanted so much to be part of it. Being... yes, that was it : being and moment and a listening. And in this being and listening she felt joyous, full of peace, proud of beauty - proud of her beauty and feeling. Proud of her power.

Then still yet again, yet more. She demanded no answers.

Her friend Wiggy had sat and watched a hawk wheeling in and out of the mists higher up the glen. He pulled out a sandwich and ate it silently. He felt the stillness, too.

The morning rested, hushed and grey, almost overshadowed. And he felt a gentle sense of the past merging with the present. He had imagined, too, the laughter and cries of children as he looked down across to the wooded ruins of Glen Camgarry : a sad, pretty place of memories, this... homely remnants around the fallen lintels and scarcely disturbed hearth. Such a wild, pretty place of sad farewells.

What had become of the family that once lived here in this, their home? With its laughter, its love, its trust? He looked at the empty glen, the fallen homestead, and reflected how the sound of children had been forced out of it by an unnatural establishment. He felt unfathomably empty and sad. The sound of children... ah... where had it gone?

Up the glen, a hare set off bounding between boulders, wild and free, disappearing towards the mist.

The rain came on drearily by the ancient rowans. His feet felt cold and damp, and it seemed like time to get moving.

Wiggy strained and got up, legs stiff after his uncomfortable night. His dishevelled jacket and kilt merged with the browns and dull greens of the hillside. He picked up a wrapper and shouldered the pack, not a trace of their presence remaining in the glen. Then he made for the trees, leaving the ruins to merge slowly back into the landscape as well : in the unchanging solitude of the wilderness.

Further down the hill, he met Roberta among the birch trees. She seemed deep in reverie, and embarrassed by his unnoticed approach; though more startled, in fact, by her own feelings when she awoke to her consciousness again.

'You seemed in a dream,' Wiggy suggested.

'I was wondering... if he had any children...'

'Who?' Wiggy asked.

'The dead man.'

He stared and smiled.

'I'm afraid I don't follow,' he said softly.

The girl seemed startled.

'What? Oh, I was just thinking... but...' she looked at him. 'You feel it, don't you? In this place? I know you do.'

He smiled again, with kind eyes, trying to understand.

'You mean the feeling of nature?' he attempted. 'It does feel very close and present here, doesn't it? Almost as if it has a life of its own...'

She breathed out heavily, in relief. So she was right. He was like her. He felt it. And he had risked showing it too.

A barrage of rain fell more heavily on leaves overhead.

'Come on Wiggy,' she commanded, fondly, with a sigh. 'The others will be miles ahead.'

And they left that sad, pretty place.

Roberta led the way down through the steep woods that curved west towards the end of Loch Arkaig and, as they picked a course through the trees, she told Wiggy how she wanted to become a rock-climber and show her father that she could be as good as any boy.

'Skye,' he said.

'Hmmm?'

'That's the place. It has the finest mountains in Britain. You ought to go there sometime...'

'I thought Skye was where Princes went when they wanted to get away from everyone.'

Wiggy gazed westwards, distant, thoughtful.

'Oh it has mountains too. Great spectacular wild ones. There is this amazing pinnacle in the heart of the island. People call it the Inaccessible Pinnacle because it's a challenge to get up it.'

He was still thinking, dreaming.

Roberta took his hand.

'Take me there, Wiggy' she pleaded, her eyes direct and courageous, meeting his.

The man's eyes twinkled and he smiled back. 'When we find the Treasure, we'll use some of the money to buy a boat, shall we? And we'll sail over the sea to Skye... and you... shall be Flora.'

They reached Kinlocharkaig, where the others had stopped for lunch. Their packs were spilled out by the bare little cottage. To the east, the waters of Loch Arkaig reached to the distance, its shores sullen and grey and ancient. Westward lay the remote mountains of Glen Pean, through which Prince Charlie passed on his escape from the battle.

'There's a bothy four miles ahead where we can stay for the night. Then tomorrow, we head for the mountain pass, to see... if my theory is right.' Gordon, with boyish enthusiasm himself, was pointing them ever deeper into the wilds. "The cruellest road" one of the Prince's companions had called it. He grinned at Wiggy as he arrived.

'Looks like the mist's clearing in the West' said the kilted friend. 'Should be a fine afternoon.' Indeed the rain had ceased, and small patches of blue sky were breaking open around the hilltops, dappling the upper glen with uncertain sunlight.

'So this is Glen Pean?' he continued.

'The Prince slept here and was given a simple tea of milk and cheese. A loyal supporter called Donald Cameron lived at this very spot - they say it's haunted - and he now acted as the Prince's guide to get him away from the redcoats.'

'Haunted?' said Harry, his interest aroused. He got up to explore the back of the cottage. Soon they could hear grotesque 'Whoo's' that would have frightened any resident ghosts far away.

'Pass the jam, Wiggy' Roberta said, making a sandwich, but when it was half-done she dropped it on the ground. To her dismay it was covered in earth and dirt.

'Here, have mine,' said her friend. 'I had one earlier anyway.'

It was a generous gesture as Gordon had rationed the bread.

'Oh - what are those?' Wiggy called out, as peaks emerged from a break in the clouds.

'Sgurr Thuilm and the ridge to a mountain called Sgurr nan Coireachan,' Gordon explained. 'Later on his travels the Prince came back to this area, and even had a midnight rendezvous on the summit of that second mountain. He met up with Donald Cameron again.'

'He was a loyal chap, this Cameron?' Wiggy said approvingly.

'Completely loyal,' Gordon affirmed.

Alasdair got up to find the recalcitrant ghost, then they gathered their packs, Wiggy adjusted Harry's straps, and they continued westward. The sunlight reached them at the first burn.

The little band made their way across the flats and headed up the southern side of Glen Pean in the patchy sunlight. They seemed tiny and provisional against the great flanks of the mountain. While strips of grey mist were dispersing from the high corries, the earth underfoot was still wet from the overnight rain, and they traced a higher route through the heather where the ground was more sure and firm.

Once again, as the afternoon wore on, they seemed quieted, spoke less often : slowly growing attuned to the hills round about them. The sun shone more resolutely, and glistened on raindrops, sparkled in the heather. Wiggy seemed relaxed now, less tense, more himself. Eyes were watching, undoubtedly, from the hillside - but it was only the deer, merged and unseen, their dun sides camouflaged, almost invisible.

They were approaching a spur of Sgurr Thuilm when Wiggy, at the head, crouched and waved furiously for them all to get down. They looked at one another, and Wiggy crept back, finger to lips. His eyes were excited, alert.

They gathered round, kneeling in the sunlight.

'Deer' Wiggy whispered. 'Four or five of them, up very close.'

They stalked forward slowly in the deep heather until they reached a small bank.

'Will they smell us?' asked Roberta. Wiggy shook his head.

'No. We're downwind. But be very quiet!'

As they crept to the rise, hushed so that they could hear their own breath, they saw five hinds grazing, fifteen yards ahead. They were so close you could smell them. Lying deep in the heather, watching those graceful creatures with such beautiful forms, Roberta felt humbled, ennobled, at one with herself again. She looked across at the gentle and sensitive man by her side. He seemed engrossed and delighted too. The air smelt of heather and deer and earth.

In an instant a crack and a roar terrified creatures, deer and children alike, as two Tornados shattered the silence, and screamed overhead in a metallic rush : so close overhead they seemed to graze the hillside and sear it with molten noise.

The deer scattered in panic and terror, bounding headlong in every direction, and Gordon rose to his feet in utter consternation.

'Blast!' he swore angrily.

'Brilliant,' said Alasdair sardonically.

Roberta looked pale and vacant.

'Look! There they go!' shouted Wiggy, as the deer broke the skyline, already hundreds of yards further up.

They sat and recovered their senses.

But as they shared some biscuits, Harry said, 'Listen... no, look!' and he pointed to two helicopters approaching the end of Loch Arkaig behind them.

Wiggy suddenly looked drawn and worried. Gordon stole a glance.

'Routine training?' the teacher suggested, half-heartedly.

Wiggy stared coldly away, unconvinced.

At the end of the loch there were two valleys, and the choppers wheeled aside and turned away up Glendessary. Soon the muffled sound of their engines was gone, leaving the glen to quieten once more and settle back again into its greater peace and ageless sanctity.

They pressed slowly onwards, Wiggy looking over his shoulder from time to time, and clearly put out. The intrusive arrogance of patriarchy seemed so out of harmony with the natural world and its beauty. On the opposite side of the River Pean, he could make out the sharp artificial outline of indiscriminate forestry. He frowned in disapproval.

'It's typical,' he complained to Gordon. 'The taming and despoiling of nature for a quick profit...'

'Can you really tame nature?' he asked.

'Maybe not, but it will take hundreds of years to recover from that.'

The sun shone in contrast to his passing mood, sparkling on the new-fallen waters, the hillside glistening; grass, heather, and boulders, all reflecting light.

The children tagged contentedly behind, their spirits rising in the warmth of the afternoon air. Roberta dropped further back along the hill, then stopped.

Suddenly, Harry called out.

'Hi! What's Roberta doing?'

The two boys started to laugh as she crouched with her trousers round her knees.

'We can see you!' they shouted across the heather.

'So what?' she yelled back belligerently. 'I'm only having a piss.'

'Haven't you ever seen someone pee before?' she complained, in frustration, as she caught them up.

'Yes - but you're a girl' one of them answered.

'A piss is a piss,' she insisted, directly, amazed at the bizarre constraints and repression they seemed all to have inherited. Then they all laughed.

The spectre of The Headmaster finding relief in the heather, brought relief to them too, as he joined them again in their imaginary adventures - minus his dog.

'Look!' said Alasdair. 'The bothy! Down there!' He pointed down across the river, which was tumbling and gleaming in the valley below. The bothy was a simple cottage, left open for walkers, nestled between hills in austere isolation. Gordon and Wiggy had seen it as well.

However, the teacher was limping a little, so he sent the children on ahead, and pulled up to attend to a blister while the other man waited. Open blue reaches of sky had now spread from the west, and the sun cast bright light on the lonely, ancient retreat.

They watched the two boys and the girl shouting and plunging down the slopes to the river where they paused to remove their boots.

Wiggy identified ruins on the near side of the water.

'The clearances?' he asked.

'Or government troops. Nobody lives here now.'

'Are we likely to meet any walkers tonight?'

'Unlikely.'

They headed down.

The children had waded the river already and were resting on their waterproofs, drying their feet, and enjoying late afternoon sun. There were a few stepping-stones close by the bothy but the water was still fairly high. It chattered and dashed, and sunlight played on its surface, glinting and radiant.

Gordon negotiated the slippery rocks but, halfway across, Wiggy lost his balance completely, and crashed back into the flowing river : water spraying everywhere, ten thousand rainbow droplets in the sun, as he struggled to recover and floundered across to the other side.

The children cheered. 'Wiggy!' they shouted.

He laughed with a roar, and his eyes twinkled, like the water in the burn. Soaking, refreshed, he emerged on the grass.

'I suppose you find that very amusing?' he asked them all, with a good-humoured smile.

'Hilarious' Roberta replied.

'Are you wet?' said Alasdair, with well-meaning care.

The others collapsed in helpless laughter and rolled about on the warm, dry ground.

'What did I say?' Alasdair asked.

Wiggy removed his sodden kilt.

'I only asked him if he was wet.'

'This,' said Wiggy, squeezing a sock down Roberta's neck, 'is water. It's rather wet. And your sister finds it hilarious.'

'I think,' declared Gordon, 'perhaps we should go to the bothy.' Alasdair pulled out a towel for Wiggy and asked -

'Is it time for tea?'

* * *