'You can get round here!' Harry's voice calling out of the silence of the lonely glen.

'Are you sure?' Roberta answered.

They negotiated their way across a stretch of peat and bog.

The girl turned, shading her eyes from the dazzling sun, and looked back.

'Come on, Wiggy!' she shouted.

Ahead of them, Alasdair and his teacher had pressed on up the valley, eager, obsessed with their quest for treasure.

It had been a late start from the bothy at Glen Pean. Perhaps they had woken a little stiff in the morning : each certainly looking a little rougher, a little more in harmony with the wild nature of the mountains around them. Besides, they had no watch. Gordon had left his behind at Glen Mallie, and Wiggy's - a rather fine pocket-watch - had stopped working in the night. But judging from the position of the sun, they had lost the first part of the morning in their leisurely waking and breakfast.

The sun! It seemed to hold everything in the released brilliance of its light and heat. They had progressed about a mile up the glen, but already cool sweat was forming on their foreheads and their clothes felt moist. The day seemed breathless, hushed, brilliant. Above them, the mountains reared up from steep broken slopes, and closed in upon them with their frowning majesty.

They walked quietly and the glen itself was stilled and silent. Light shone on water, on rocks, on the grass and shrub beneath their feet, glistening, flashing, shining. They seemed cut off, enchanted, under some summer spell : the insistent light and haze lent a dream-like quality to the ancient paths that they followed.

Together.

'If we find the treasure,' Roberta was saying 'you will let us climb that pinnacle, won't you? You promised, Wiggy.'

The kindly man had caught up with her. His thigh seemed quite well now : in fact, he himself felt quite well - felt the pleasant well-being of muscles and fitness and heart and mind, more integrated, more fully alive.

'He said we could go the Isle of Skye, Harry. Could climb up the Inaccessible Pinnacle. Won't that be cool?'

Harry seemed interested, but merely grunted approval and reserved his opinion.

'If we find the treasure. I said if we find the treasure!' Wiggy laughed. Roberta's eyes sparkled with delight, as she looked into his.

'Then we will, Wiggy. Even if we have to spend fifty years searching for it.'

'I'll be dead by then,' he replied.

'Old man.'

They came to a small burn, running down the side of the mountain, and Harry stopped to splash his face in the water. It was clear and fresh, unspoilt. Roberta and Wiggy joined, slumping down beside him. The chill water ravished their thirsty throats. Wiggy, cold droplets trickling down his face, looked up at the sun in the sky, saw the light on the stream, and breathed in deeply. It felt good to be alive. More elemental.

He glanced up the glen and could make out Gordon and Alasdair pressing onwards : they seemed small, bobbing along beneath the enclosing mountains that rose high above them. Their progress seemed so slight as they edged on into the great wilderness : their presence almost indiscernible.

Alasdair stopped, his brow wet and sweating, his hair swept back and moist in the heat. He took off his pack.

'Shall we rest for a while?' he suggested.

Gordon agreed. The teacher bent down and removed his rucksack, then straightened himself above the boy and surveyed the trail they had taken and the way they must go. As he polished his glasses, he looked calm and contented, smiling to himself and thinking aloud.

'This is ancient country,' he said, breathing in the pure air. 'Don't you feel it? So untouched and unchanging?'

'It's funny to think that Charlie stood here, right here, all those years ago,' said the boy.

'And nothing has altered.'

Alasdair looked out.

'Up ahead,' said Gordon, pointing in the sunlight, 'you can almost see where the pass goes over to Loch Morar. Donald Cameron brought the Prince and his friends all the way up here, and at the pass the way gets too steep for the horses.'

'You reckon the treasure was hidden at that point? Where the horses could go on no more?'

'Perhaps,' he said. 'At a later date. You've got to remember that the ship with the French gold didn't land until after Charlie had come through this way.'

'Oh yes. I'd forgotten that. Was he already in the Hebrides?'

'Indeed. He reached the shores of Loch Morar, where he was given some milk and curds and butter.'

'Yuk. Poor bloke.'

'Then across the hills toward Arisaig.'

'Loch nan Uamh.'

'Well remembered. As the redcoats closed in, they set off at dusk in a small oared boat, and a terrible storm in the dark swept them west to the outer isles.'

'They could have ended up in America!'

'But at "peep of day" they were washed up ashore on the island of Benbecula. And for the time, he'd left the redcoats behind.'

'But the treasure,' said Alasdair recalling their purpose. 'How will we know where to look for the treasure...'

'There are two small lochans ahead. We skirt the first, but when we reach the second on the mountain pass, we'll come to a maze of boulders and caverns. A crazy jumble of underground holes. And my theory,' he grinned, 'is that that's where we look.'

'Underground? Is that why you've brought the rope?'

It lay coiled by his pack, purple and clean against a grey rock and a spread of heather.

'You'll see.' He beamed, in a perfect good-humour.

After the group had caught up, and they had shared a few words and biscuits together, they shouldered their packs and set off for Lochan Leum an t-Sagairt : the first loch. They had only been walking a short while, in the relentless heat, when something, some movement ahead, alerted Harry's hair-trigger senses.

'We've got company,' he exclaimed gruffly.

Wiggy instantly scoured the heath, and locked on to the same movement of distant figures coming down the glen towards them.

Roberta peered through her glasses.

The other two were still talking, self-absorbed, about the Prince's movements in the Hebrides. There was something that didn't seem clear to the girl. So she took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. Then she looked again, as they walked on closer.

But Harry deduced it first.

'There's four, five of them... but...' He looked at Roberta. 'They haven't got any clothes on!' The boy seemed astonished.

It was true.

Coming across the flat grasslands below the loch, in the shimmering brightness, were three young children and their parents. They seemed to be travelling light, unencumbered except for one pack and what might be a tent. And as they drew closer, happy familiar laughter could be heard : the calm talk and chatter of a group that had walked in the mountains, maybe, for days. Wiggy had veered off, leftwards up the brae a little, and did not appear to welcome this sudden disturbance of his intimate loneliness. He watched the family cross below him, and they seemed so close and happy and secure. For the first time on the trip, he felt alone. His friends converged and the boys, at least, were gripped by an appalled fascination.

'Look!' said Alasdair in amazement. 'Just look! They've got absolutely nothing on.'

'They have got boots,' Roberta replied.

'That's almost nothing,' Harry laughed.

'Be polite and friendly' Gordon requested.

They were approaching now.

The father, bearded and bespectacled, and carrying the tents, waved as they neared and seemed to be casual and calm.

His skin was tanned and glistening in the heat, and he had an air of peace and contentment about him. Normality. But his cock - that was the point - his cock dangled, relaxed and free, from its nest of dark rough hair, and swung between his legs, in his leisurely stride.

The children were transfixed. Three youngsters - none of them older than eight - advanced : all equally naked to the sun and earth, except that each wore a sunhat, and the youngest had a vest but no shorts. The mother, long-haired and breasts free, was laughing and talking to the eldest child. But the eyes of Gordon's pupils kept returning to the stranger's cock, his penis. They glanced with uncertain astonishment.

'Fine day,' the father smiled as they passed.

'Hi!' said his children.

'Good morning,' Alasdair attempted.

'Are you heading for Oban bothy?' the mother asked.

'Yes,' answered the teacher. 'Did you stay there last night?'

'Watch out for the bats,' she replied as they sauntered away, five pairs of buttocks half-shadowed as they headed east down the glen. The mother lifted her youngest one up, almost, to the sky, and kissed her. As they strolled away, the family group seemed fond and close.

Harry and Alasdair, who had contained their amazement, now convulsed in giggles, whispers and exclamation.

'Did you see it?' said Harry. 'Did you see it?'

'They could be arrested. That was unreal.'

'Did you see the thing, just hanging there?'

They broke into insecure laughter.

'So what?' said Roberta bluntly. 'You've seen a willy before, haven't you?'

'Maybe,' said Alasdair, 'but I wouldn't like to be one of them when the midges come out tonight!' And they all laughed with relief. Wiggy rejoined them and looked at Philip Gordon.

'False alarm,' the teacher whispered.

'Probably wise to keep my distance.'

'I think so,' Gordon agreed with a nod.

'Did you see them?' Alasdair asked, jumping up. 'The nudies, Wiggy! Did you see them back there?'

They could all see them, at a distance now, walking together in the vast wilderness, together, close. Instinctively, Roberta felt a shiver of loneliness at odds with the light and so much heat. The return of a sense of dislocation.

'I'm going back,' she decided suddenly. 'They can post a card for me when they get out.'

She wrestled in the back of Wiggy's pack, while he wriggled and tugged to maintain his balance.

'Stand still, Wiggy! I can't find a pen.'

She moved, at length, to a rock by herself.

'You're not going back to the Nudies!' said Harry. 'I couldn't do it. Not that,' he gasped.

She ignored their humour, for her heart was suddenly filled with sadness and longing; and she scrawled a rushed message, leaning the card on her knee, biting the end of the pen. Then 'I'll catch you up!' she shouted to them, as she ran down the heather in pursuit of the group.

'Come on,' said Wiggy. 'Let's carry on. She can catch us up.' So they left her alone.

When she reached the family, they turned towards her and she presented her card, feeling urgent and raw. The parents smiled at the dark-haired girl and the children stared, innocently, curious.

'I wondered,' she stammered, 'if you'd be so kind...'

'Would you like us to post it?' the father smiled through his unkempt beard, and reached out his strong, bronzed arm.

Then she noticed that the card had not got a stamp.

He peered through his glasses at the few rushed words.

Suddenly, Roberta felt exposed and emotional. She could feel tears welling up from deep down within.

In a glance, Mr Nudie had caught the last line - 'Oh Daddy, I love you so much' it said simply. Then he saw the address.

'Do you live in a castle?'

The mother, perceptive, had tousled her hair.

'A Castle!' she exclaimed. 'How wonderful.'

'I'll tell you what,' said Nudie with a beam. 'We'll deliver it personally. What do you reckon?'

'Oh thank you' Roberta replied with relief.

'Have you been out here long?' Mrs Nudie enquired.

'Two days,' said the girl. 'We're looking for treasure.'

And they parted.

'A castle,' she just heard one of them say. 'Imagine if we lived in a castle my dear...'

The heat of the day bore down on the glen, forced the mind to retire and allow a more sensuous being. Shadows shortened. Her hair felt wet. At the first loch she caught them up. Wiggy and Harry had stripped to the waist; Alasdair's T-shirt drenched and dripping. Below them the light danced on the loch. Gaily.

From there the trail grew harsher and steeper, as they followed the Prince's footsteps, pace for pace, along what a companion of his had called "the cruellest road". Huge rocks protruded and barred the way. To their right, a cliff appeared to have collapsed, leaving its debris at the edge of the final loch. They picked their course through a maze of boulders. No horse could have followed. A whole platoon of redcoats could have searched all day in vain for renegades in this savage domain. Nature had shed its pretty façade.

For Gordon and Alasdair this was the moment of heightened awareness, as they reached the caverns at the second loch.

'Here! Do you see!' said the teacher, sweating with excitement in the heat of the day.

'Wild! It goes down deep!' shouted Alasdair, staring into the gaping hole that fell away beneath two huge boulders. 'And here's another!'

They dropped their loads. Philip Gordon was emptying his pack, and locating slings, karabiners, a harness and torch.

'The Treasure! Here we come! I can smell it!' he joked, rubbing his hands.

'Not a chance,' said the boy. 'Just you wait till we get to my place. Then I'll show you.'

They were high, and happy, at the simple adventure : the prospect that suddenly they might stumble across it all. That's what gave the hunting for treasure its thrill, its obsessional lure. Even Harry was animated, sneaking and snooping round boulders, peering between rocks.

The process, in fact, was slow and tortuous. Alasdair was roped down below with a torch, brushing past cobwebs and gripping rough edges of rock. The scrabble of his boots and hollow voice could be heard for ages, before he shouted 'There's nothing in this one. Let's try another.'

The reflection of the sun off the rock was oppressive, and Roberta and Wiggy tired of waiting on the boulders above, wandering aside to a burn close by. Roberta lowered her face to the stream, taking great gulps of the pure cold : Wiggy knelt opposite, lapping water up in his hands, and washing his face.

'We'll let the others do the hard work, eh?' he said with a smile, as they took off their boots and socks. Wiggy reclined in the rough heather and closed his eyes. Soon his body relaxed and he could sense the gentle, pleasant touch of a slight, soft breeze upon his face, across his legs and peat-stained feet.

Roberta studied the kind man's face. He seemed less strained than when she'd met him first. She took in, as well, his bared chest, hairs and glistening sweat in the sun : and the slow rise and fall of his breast. Within her, she felt a liking and sympathy, a fondness too.

Then she rolled aside and stared down into the slow, peaty burn : its surface darting light and movement, but deep within, a brown and shadowed stillness, dappled shadow, lurking otherworld. Down among threads of water-weed she could see a fish, mottled, quiet, undisturbed. She felt, outside its world, as if it had always lived there, known a different universe, inhabited its own country from which her thoughts, her knowledge, and her limited wisdom were all cut off.

Yet in the stillness of her dark less-conscious being she returned there too, and shared its world of sensuous older wisdom, deeper water and lurking flood.

Up on the surface, under the hard blue skies and probing light, she exchanged brief syllables with her friend, every few minutes, or so it seemed; for they had no watch and their lives had grown almost momentary. Periodically, they would hear the others calling, somewhere in the rocky background, obsessed, and urgent. She lowered her eyes again to the lurking fish, but saw only golden stones, and shadowy weeds. Then she rested back in the sun and closed her eyes. They lay there, aware and yet not analysing, not interpreting, not seeking such tense mental control.

But a good deal later, when the breeze grew a little restless through the grass, they became more talkative. She stirred and turned on her side to Wiggy.

'What are you thinking?' she asked. He was gazing out at the distant mountains.

'Oh nothing,' he answered.

'Tell me,' she insisted.

The sunlight was flashing on burns across the glen, and the mountain dropped away in a chaos of boulders and rocky defiles. The man seemed dreamy. High overhead on the opposite hillside a raven wheeled, slowly, haunting, unhurried.

'I was just thinking,' he said in due course, 'about palaces and kings...'

Roberta plucked a blade of grass. She chewed its hollow end and frowned lightly.

'Really?' she replied.

'Yes,' he said. They could hear their friends, scratching and scraping on the nearby boulders. 'How, if you strip everything aside - you always come back to this.' He waved with his palm at the eternal backdrop.

'You see that bird?'

Roberta nodded.

'The raven,' he said. 'She's a bird of prey. She's savage and wild. She waits, endures, for carnage and blood. Don't you see?' He stared. 'All the manners and graces of royal courts : what do they amount to? They all come down to this.'

Her mind was quick, percipient.

'So all Charlie's dreams must end up here...'

'Exactly, Roberta' the friendly man beamed.

'It's boiling,' she said, dismissing his thoughts, and lifted her sweatshirt over her head. She straightened her bra and cast the shirt aside in the heathery deeps. She could smell the bloom of the tiny flowers, as she rested her head on the soft bank. And something else, on the air, as well. Eventually she became curious.

'Wiggy...'

The burn lapped against rocks and winks of sunlight played on its surface.

'Yes?' he said.

He lay outstretched on the warm scrub.

'Can you smell something?'

He became aware of the sickly, over-sweet smell.

'It smells like some kind of a carcass,' he said.

Roberta shuddered.

He opened his eyes and sat himself up. The world seemed almost white in the dazzling sun and glare of noon.

They got to their feet and stepped carefully over the heather and sharp lichen on the weathered rocks.

'Ah!' he uttered, and together they saw it, the rotting remains of a stag at their feet. Wiggy looked up at the crag overhead. 'It must have fallen from there, poor thing!'

'Come on,' he said, but Roberta gazed at the dead creature - its vacant eye-sockets, congealed blood, and the fuss of flies - in a kind of appalling fascination. Maggots were writhing and crawling around a yawning gash in its rancid flank. The girl looked on, attracted, drawn, and the moment held them.

'The raven had its eyes' Wiggy surmised. 'They...'

'It's disgusting,' said Roberta. 'Surely we can't be as savage as that?'

'Oh, but we are!' the man asserted. 'If we say that we're not, we deny ourselves. We live with a fragile veneer of order, but in one sense all our civilisation is founded on this. Blood, fury, terror, slaughter. You're looking at Culloden, Roberta. You're looking at Culloden.'

'It's disgusting,' she repeated, but continued to stare, mesmerised both by the scene and by wakening impulses in her own being : taken by surprise, within, by the thrill and terror and excitement of her own savagery.

'Bring my boots, Wiggy,' she ordered. 'I'm going to see how they're getting on.'

The gentle friend started to protest, in vain.

She turned and smiled. 'Then I'll come back and fetch them later.'

But he slowly complied. The day was too lovely to argue. He was conscious only of the beauty and power of the hills.

Out of the blazing sunlight, Alasdair and Gordon were by now exploring a fourth entrance into the ground, while Harry preferred to do freelance work on his own, seeking out lairs, climbing through clefts and following the scent alone, by himself.

This opening appeared different to the others. At the back of the gloomy cavity behind a large wedge of rock, a gap seemed to slant away downwards into the pitch darkness. So Alasdair had called Gordon to join him. As the teacher reached the floor of the hole he called up to Harry, who let down the rope. The child's voice echoed faintly, muffled, remote.

The teacher and pupil looked at each other. No hierarchy now. Just a shared purpose. They were wholly alert. The teacher took the lead and angled himself down into the lower chasm. It was like a descent toward black nothingness. In the distance, Harry's voice became fainter : 'Have you found anything? What can you see?' Alasdair followed, his natural fear just warded off by the drive to pursue their shared task to its bold conclusion. The darkness closed in, whenever the torches swept by : Gordon's face, shaded, monstrous... The boy felt almost lost, in this underground world, and fear stalked the shadowed passages round the unseen corners and vaults of his mind.

He wished he was up in that other world, of sunlight and space, of heather and trees - and control. Yet he felt driven downwards, downwards by the thrill of adventure and the conquest of fear.

Instinctively this darkened chamber felt different, their excitement more fevered, and at one point Gordon let out 'What's this?' - echoing, 'What's this, what's this' - and in the blackness clawed at the dust with his small bare hands and slender nails. But the torch had just flashed on some quartz on the ground. What a strange hold this search exerted, this fevered quest for gold, this hunt for hidden treasure. Then Alasdair's torch caught something even more substantial, shining in a corner, gleaming in its beam. His heart began to race.

They followed the reflected light to discover - only a couple of empty whisky bottles, with old labels upon them : Bowmore, Talisker. The darkness seemed to encroach again.

'If there was any treasure,' said Gordon with resignation in his voice, 'these people found it first... and celebrated!' Their hopes slunk far away into the deep shadows. The teacher was going to say something else.

But Harry cried 'Hi!' And 'Hi!' 'Hi!' it echoed around them.

Gordon looked up, confused. The voice seemed somehow nearer to them, yet they were further from the entrance than before.

'Is there anybody there?' it echoed again.

'Try down this way,' said Alasdair, pointing to a bend in the tunnel with his torch. They squeezed round a column of rock which shielded the inner chamber. Then at once they saw Harry Baxter, silhouetted in a low archway of light, at the far end. He had simply scrambled down the boulders outside, and found another entry to the self-same network of holes and passages.

Alasdair went out to the light with relief, glad to be breathing fresh air once more. They all sat down and switched off their torches. In the broken light beneath the rocky arch they slumped, and felt a certain vacancy. The passages had been searched : they could do no more.

And at the point of giving up, it happened.

Lingering in the entrance, fingering small dusty stones, Harry suddenly stopped, and peered in bemusement.

Over against the wall of the boulder where they were sitting, he had picked up something different which he held in his outstretched arm. Doubtfully he handed a coin to Gordon, and all three looked in silence with the same unconfessed idea.

They held their breath, and watched the dust of centuries which the teacher's hand rubbed off : one dark golden gleam appearing miraculously and revealing Charlie's hidden treasure.

Alasdair reached over his shoulder in awe and stared. 'Maybe the rest of the treasure is still in there too.'

'It is what life is all about!' said Gordon in a daze. Drifting down, the stream of sunrays cast light on his ragged hair, and stole towards the single golden coin. 'A dream of treasure, boys, a quest for beauty, but ever vanishing, ever remote. Remember this moment!'

He was elated and surprised.

At this point, Wiggy and Roberta arrived. They had clambered down the havoc of boulders, following the sound of voices they could hear below.

'What's up?' asked Wiggy.

'The Treasure!' said Alasdair. 'We've found the Treasure!'

His eyes were ablaze.

It was not, of course, the hoard they had been searching for; but for the first time, they were looking at a glimmer of treasure, the prospect of it, the first taste of what lay waiting, perhaps, in the great expanse of hills beyond.

They grouped round, a close little band of friends, taking it in turn to hold the coin : all pleased, all fascinated.

'It's French. It's gold,' Gordon confirmed as he passed it on to Wiggy, both men themselves surprised because they had scarcely been serious - scarcely...

The coin glinted darkly in the bright light. It seemed strange and mysterious, and drew their gaze. Who had handled it? Who had left it there? And why? The gold, gleaming; the gold, alluring, beckoning; creating a sense of wonder; an awakening to dreams; and drawing them close.

Perhaps that was the point that was always missed : that far from leaving them behind at dawn, people needed to wake up to dreams, wake up and claim them, believe them, know them, enter into them.

They decided to spend, perhaps, a half hour searching again - all of them - for more treasure. Wiggy sidled up to the teacher.

'Tell me honestly,' he whispered, 'before I go scraping around on my knees. You planted it, didn't you? For the boy's sake?'

Gordon looked alarmed.

'No! Honestly, no!' he complained. And that was enough.

'Then we better have a bloody good look' said Wiggy.

'Only I'm sure we've searched the holes already...'

And indeed, they could find no further sign of Charlie's treasure, though the children were not dismayed. The trail was alive - that was enough - had been walked on, lived along and they were living it now. Alasdair was in an imaginative world that had come to life. For him, this was a vindication of his teacher, a triumph which made them belong, gave them a share in Charlie's adventures. He handed the golden coin to Harry, who had found it first. The kind boy wanted his friend to belong as well; to feel the pulse of the people they were following. Harry, for his part, was on red alert, looking everywhere, sensing he had a particular role to play and - almost believing in himself.

They were more than ready to eat, whatever the time, and edged round the little lochan to a shadowy knoll among the old contorted trees that lay beyond. Lunch was basic - hardening bread, some cheese, an apple - but all of them were happy, relaxed and somehow taken out of themselves.

The three children nestled up close as the men sorted out the food and laughed. Beneath the sunny sky, and shadowy branches, their voices floated dreamily. And they talked to each other with a shared fondness : sunny faces, silver laughter, and dreaming eyes in the golden afternoon. It was a matchless day.

'So that's it,' said Roberta gaily. 'We're bound for the bonny Isle of Skye!'

'What?'

'You promised.' The girl giggled brightly.

'I said, if. I said, if we found the treasure, Roberta.'

'And we have.' Smiling, with a pointed finger.

'That's not the treasure...' Cheerfully, in vain.

'Oh yes it is' she refrained sweetly. 'And you promised, my dear Wig. O wonderful Wig Man.'

The man, in response, threw his cup of water all over her and laughed.

'Wiggy!' the girl protested fondly.

'Like Bonnie Prince Charlie himself,' said Gordon. 'Away over the sea to Skye.' It was a romantic prospect. Gordon recounted the adventures again. The Prince's happy stay at Corodale, in the outer isles, where the whisky and brandy had flowed so freely; the redcoat's pursuit; and the escape by night to the Isle of Skye, dressed up as Betty Burke.

'But he wasn't safe there,' said Gordon. 'And when he returned to the mainland, he found that the government troops were hunting high and low for him, in a great cordon which cut him off.'

He took a bite of bread and pointed above him.

'Charlie came back this way again, remember. With the help of the brave Glenaladale, he arrived up there on Sgurr nan Coireachan and they crossed Glen Pean and tried to break through the trap. Night after night they headed north.'

Alasdair swallowed a mouthful of cheese.

'Was that when they met the Wild Men of Glenmoriston?'

'Who?' enquired Wiggy. Gordon explained.

'A small band of outlaws, hiding in the hills. The Glenmoriston men were outside the law, but they saw that the Prince was as well, and they helped him : a most extraordinary alliance!'

'It must have been wicked fun!' said Harry. 'Living with a gang of outlaws in the hills. A bit like this!'

'They made a hide-out in a cave,' the girl recalled.

'The cave I want to find is the one at Beoraid,' her brother reminded them all. 'When Charlie came back from Skye, he was hidden up there, before he came over these hills and headed north.' 'Then we head for Loch Beoraid!' said Gordon to their general approval. 'But tonight we go down to the bothy at Oban.'

The talk and the laughter drifted on calmly, all agreeing on the merits of going down hills, except Wiggy whose knees occasionally troubled him. And food. And bothies. And always the gleam of the treasure.

'I'm convinced the treasure would be kept at Beoraid. It's near to the sea, and when you think about it...'

They dreamed on quietly in the drowsy heat, innocent dreamers on a summer afternoon, dreaming the faery-dream of youth, that seems to go on and last for ever in the rock and lull of the joyful present. They seemed, almost, to have been abducted from the tense grey world beyond, and brought to a quieter acceptance, a calm acquiescence. Soft shadows cut across the silent grove, the sun glancing between trees, making elusive advances and forays, alighting on brows or over patches of grass : so that a door seemed to have crept ajar. And their laughter rang along the verges, and echoed, the laughter of abandoned children, more simply aware.

While, behind them, always the presence of the prince and memories, moments like echoes, reaching down the years, voices like shadows among ancient trees, and all caught up, caught up in the summer of youth and a passing dream.

Wiggy was the first to stir, putting on his boots and damp socks, and passing Roberta hers. He picked up a couple of wrappers from the ground and they set off upon their descent. Out on the open hillside again, the sun was declining though the heat had scarcely abated, and the glen smelt of warm heather and sweat and peat. The heather, indeed, was thick and wild, brushing their calves and thighs as they passed. And the ground felt soft beneath their feet, with plenty of give for Wiggy's knees.

But over the pass behind them, before they had walked very far, there was a sudden disturbance and approaching uproar. A grouse took flight in alarm close by them. Wiggy and Gordon jerked their heads around just as the helicopters broke the skyline, so close, so low, almost upon them in a moment. Gordon yelled at the children.

'Redcoats!' he shouted against the deafening roar. 'Dive! Get down! Down in the heather!'

Each child reacted at once to the call : Alasdair ducking through a tangle of bushes; Roberta flattening herself on the earth; Harry throwing himself down the hillside and lost in an instant on the sweep of the mountain.

The tense whining, and metallic roar, of the two craft pressed them flat, in a rush of wind and flailing undercurrent. The noise and riot of straining metal was like some kind of arbitrary rage against the settled wilderness and still, unchanging sanctity of the hills. It felt hostile, anomalous; seemed at first hard to comprehend : like an angry assault.

As he regained his senses, Wiggy was aware of his face, pressed against the earth, and the smell of peat - soft, elemental - as he nestled down in, was buried in, the heather. And nature seemed to hold him.

The sound of the great machines receded, and he felt the soil in his clenched hands, and the wild scrub on his legs and back, and the hillside seemed gentle and safe and enclosed. He relaxed and rested.

Then the voice of children, recovering, shouting, excited and innocent. They looked out across the hillside at one another, as each emerged and raised a head above the heather. And they grinned and felt close, familiar.

'Bonnie Prince Charlie and his faithful friends have another narrow escape from the Redcoats,' Gordon announced, as they regrouped and talked. It was a grand game; and it worked because each of the children wanted to believe, wanted to follow Charlie and hide in the heather.

'Merging,' Wiggy had called it with Gordon. Nature reclaiming her own.

Further down the hill, as the path grew easier, they relaxed and quietened, spread out from one another along the narrow trail; while high above, the mountains overlooked. Around them, heather; and dark streams - the dark streams of their forebears, echoing down through the years from the remotest corries. Their small figures, scarcely noticeable on the broad hillside, wound slowly down the glen that headed west.

Each was walking quietly, alone. And as they walked in silence, they were listening more, watching more : more sensitive to subtle movements in the heather and subdued stirrings in them and nearby. Walking downwards, they settled into the rhythm around them, at ease with their own thoughts.

Wiggy, recalling earlier years in the heather, when he was younger and life seemed, somehow, simpler and more direct.

Roberta, dreaming of the brave Glenaladale - risking his life for the sake of the Prince - handsome, bold, forever young. And the Prince, crouching in the heather, crawling, stealing past the redcoats and evading arrest.

At a rise of ground, the braes of Loch Morar came into sight, the light catching on the water, and making it shine. And beyond, the mountains of Rhum, the Hebrides : almost floating upon the further skyline, remote, inaccessible, timeless and still.

Her thoughts leaped west and she felt, with a yearning and ache, the desire to fly to those islands, and to cross over, cross over the shining waters. She imagined an Island of Glass, an island of light, that beckoned and called from across the sea. She imagined some further country, a wonderful isle of fractured prismatic lights, and it felt so real and it was all of it light and loveliness : an Island of Glass in the folds of the sea. She would fly there with her friend Glenaladale. She longed for such adventure. She was aware of it within herself. Aware that it was out there, waiting to be acknowledged.

Harry arrived first, at the foot of the glen, passing the outline of ruined shielings and broken walls of stone. Alasdair and Gordon followed, and both of them knew that Charlie had come by too, just a while ago. The sense of the past was so close, so tangible : as if the present was only a blink; as if Charlie was a friend, who was standing beside them a minute ago, and was just coming back, so close and familiar.

Stopping by the ruined walls they felt the lurking of ancient memories; of things, personalities, 'just round the corner.' These tiny ruins crouched among bracken, heather and scattered boulders : the people, disappeared yet somehow always present; like a wife, who is still around the house, somewhere near, even when your brain tells you she's gone, gone and will never come back again.

Gordon felt, beyond articulation, an aching beauty by these fallen remains, and yet, something so inexorably sad : the departure and disappearance of families, the despoiling of an older way of life. And the ruins just lingering, enduring, by the low murmuring waters of the river.

They moved on, keen to conclude their walk, feeling a little footsore and worn, after the long day's effort and heat. Indeed, all of them were looking rougher now, unkempt, less washed : their bodies, somehow, more lived in and better used. Rounding the head of the loch they arrived at Oban Bothy, which nestled beneath the mountains, almost enclosed and hidden.

They dropped their packs at the broken door, tired by now and yet not dispirited, and felt their way inside. It was dark and shadowed, out of the glare of the sun, old hidden secrets lurking in empty corners, just out of sight, or echoing in the darkness. The derelict cottage seemed almost overtaken by nature, repossessed, overgrown at the back : and half the roof blown loose in a winter gale.

There was one rough table, a fireplace and a tangled pile of bogwood left by a previous visitor. The panelled walls had been vandalized, and planks of wood lay broken in a dark corner. Stubs of candles in old bottles lined the shelves and dirty mantlepiece. There were mouse-droppings on the ground, and some of the windows were cracked or broken.

'Palaces and Kings!' said Roberta as Wiggy, who was last to arrive, staggered in. 'You said you were thinking of palaces and kings. Well here it is : welcome to the Palace!'

A voice from upstairs yelled out : 'There are bats in the roof! Loads of bats!'

Wiggy turned to Philip Gordon and grinned.

'What a beautiful setting for a cottage,' he said, 'and not another person for miles around. It could, perhaps, do with a tiny spot of refurbishment, do you think...'

'Oh I think that would be a pity,' the teacher replied and they patted each other on the back.

Wiggy pulled out a whisky flask and they sat on the floor, backs to the wall, and drank slowly and gladly, until there was no more left.

* * *