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“His grandmother, you said. Hasn’t Stuart any parents?”

“His father was killed in the war and a few years ago his mother married again. Her husband has to travel a great deal. He’s in the consular service or something like that, I think, and at present they’re in New York, or it may be Washington. His mother comes home sometimes on a visit, but Stuart prefers to live in Scotland.”

“What does he do, then? Doesn’t he need to earn a living?” Judith was aware of an impelling curiosity that forced her to ask questions.

“He wouldn’t starve if he idled, but actually he works really hard. The Huntlys own most of Kylsaig as well as very large estates on the mainland, so there’s plenty to keep him busy.”

“Yes. Mrs. Drummond told me how he had knocked two cottages into one for their home.”

“He’s quite ambitious to restore prosperity to Kylsaig. He’s trying to get Andy interested in rebuilding the old quay on this side of the island. But I don’t see that would do much good. Nobody can stop the old people dying and the young ones leaving because there are so few jobs, so the crofts fall into decay anyway.”

“But you and Andy are young ones,” Judith pointed out. “Together you’re keeping a croft from falling into a ruin. There’s Neil, too. He’s taken over a place.”

“Neil says he’s come here for peace and quiet and he doesn’t want the island turned into a tourist resort.”

“I suppose then he won’t mind if his own cottage falls apart as long as it’s a picturesque ruin.” Judith was surprised at her own acid comment. She made an effort to swerve away from the subject. “Well, tell me, what do we wear when we dine with this Scottish lord of the isles and his grandmother? Kilts?”

Barbara giggled. “You don’t know what an enormous indiscretion that would be. They would certainly be offended.”

The picnic which Barbara had arranged for the next day was a great success. Andy took the whole family in his dinghy to the beach beyond Cruban which Judith had glimpsed yesterday.

“Later in the season, this beach gets frightfully crowded,” Barbara said when they landed. “Caravans everywhere and scarcely room to put down your vacuum flask without getting it knocked over by somebody else’s children.”

“Robbie and Susan can be relied on to do their share of knocking things over,” Andy commented. “One of them usually barges in and upsets the milk or tips out the butter on to the shingle.”

Judith watched the children now. Robbie, now nearly nine, was fair-haired and slender, a young, masculine edition of what Barbara must have been at that age. But Susan was small and dark, totally unlike her mother; her eyes were deep blue pools in a delicately-featured pale face framed with crisply curling dark hair. In a shrunken mustard yellow bathing suit, she trotted happily about the beach, fetching and carrying water or shingle in plastic bags at Robbie’s bidding.

How could Barbara bemoan her lot when she and Andy possessed two such lovely children? Judith thought.

Barbara decided not to bathe, but Judith accompanied Andy and the children and romped with them in the gentle waves.

After lunch the two sisters lazed on the beach while the others pottered about looking for shells.

Barbara sat up to apply more sun-protecting lotion to her long, slender legs, then lay back on the big towel, a cartwheel hat embroidered with multi-coloured raffia flowers shading her face and neck.

“You’re lucky, Judy, that you don’t burn to an unbecoming lobster shade as soon as there’s a fine sunny spell.”

Judith rolled over on her towel and propped herself on her elbows. “I think you’re lucky, too. When I’m back in London and the streets are like an oven, I shall envy you —bathing whenever you feel like it, or being able to go out in a boat.”

Barbara’s eyebrows arched. “The shoe’s on the other foot. However oven-like London may be in summer, I shall be the one to envy you. If only we could go back..."

“But you couldn’t expect Andy to throw up his holding after less than two years!”

“Why not? He threw up his good, safe job to come here.”

“But, darling, you were willing. You could have refused. Andy would never have forced you to come.”

“I tried to be fair. I wanted Andy to have the chance to see how he shaped as a farmer. He would always have resented it if we hadn’t given the scheme a trial.” Barbara gave a sad little laugh. “I’m the one who hasn’t really shaped up to being a farmer’s wife.”

Judith ached with sympathy, seeing clearly her sister’s dilemma. Perhaps it had been too much to expect a sophisticated girl accustomed to working in glamorous surroundings, then making herself a married life with some elegance, to uproot herself so ruthlessly.

The point was even emphasised when, on the homeward journey, Andy tied up his boat at the ferry mooring and the party trudged up the sloping path over the shoulder of the hill to the other side of Kylsaig.

“I’ll be glad when Stuart gets some sort of slipway ready on our side of the island,” Andy murmured apologetically to Judith. “If I could moor there, it would save all this long tramp home.”

Barbara threw her sister a glance that said plainly, “You see what I mean?”

“Couldn’t you moor your boat nearer to the house now?” asked Judith. “The sea’s quite close.”

Andy laughed, and Barbara joined in. “The last time I tried that,” Andy replied, “the dinghy stuck fast in the mud and we had to wait nearly a week for a high tide to shift her.”

Next day, Barbara had several plans to suggest. “If you could manage to amuse yourself today, then tomorrow we might go over to Cruban together. I shall have to get my hair done anyway if we’re going to the Huntlys for dinner in the evening. After that you might like to go on some of the day trips to places. Otherwise all your holidays will fly by and you’ll have seen nothing of Scotland.”

“I’ll have another shot at exploring the island today,” Judith declared. “This time I shall start the other way round.”

Barbara began to giggle. “D’you know, Judy, that’s something I’ve never done yet myself. Made the round tour. I can’t even direct you. If Andy were here, or the children, they’d—”

“Don’t worry. I shall find my way,” Judith assured her sister. “Just let me take a sandwich or two and a piece of cake. Then you needn’t bother about a midday meal for me.”

She reached the high centre of Kylsaig from where the best views were to be seen. Across the water beyond the long coastline of Mull were the shapes of distant islands faintly silhouetted on the dazzling Atlantic. On the mainland, range after range of blue-grey mountains cut sharply into the clear sky and farther away snow-tipped peaks gleamed in the sunshine.

The town of Cruban was hidden by the shoulder of the next hill, but across the Sound of Kylsaig she could glimpse a grey stone house half hidden by trees. Could this be Stuart Huntly’s home, Garranmure?

She turned towards the downward track, but yet again the right path eluded her, for after clambering down to a stony beach and across a tussocky bog, she could see no way leading across the jutting spit of land.

“But it’s an island!” she muttered aloud. “I ought to be able to walk all round it without getting lost.”

She made several attempts to cross the swampy ground, then clambered through some barbed wire and across a deep, muddy burn. The hills of the interior folded across each other and obscured her view, preventing her from finding any known landmarks.

Half laughing, half angry, she returned part of the way she had come and sat down in the shelter of a stone wall to eat her sandwiches. She lit a cigarette and the warm sunshine and peaceful atmosphere lulled her into a good temper again. She was undecided whether to make another attempt to conquer Kylsaig. Shading her eyes, she looked along the grassy path and saw a man coming towards her. Too tall for Andy, unaccompanied by a dog as Neil would be, perhaps some other holidaymaker trying to find a way round the island.

But the figure waved his stick and she saw then that Stuart Huntly was hurrying towards her.

“Barbara said I might find you somewhere on the island’s outer edge,” he greeted her.

“I wanted to make the circular trip, but I’ve failed again,” she admitted. “I’m certainly no Robinson Crusoe!”

Stuart leaned against the stone wall, his hazel eyes full of laughter. Judith’s practised eye for fabrics noted the soft fine tweed of his jacket and trousers, his cream silk shirt, and regretted her own appearance after negotiating two sets of barbed wire.

“I borrowed a pair of Barbara’s denims,” she murmured, “and one of her oldest shirts. Your island is rough on clothes, and I haven’t improved these.” She glanced ruefully at a small tear in the knee of the trousers. “By the way, I’m sorry I’ve eaten all the food I brought with me.”

“Your sister gave me coffee and scones. What’s your programme now?”

She frowned. “I’m not sure. I’d like to do what I set out to do. It’s a sort of challenge—if you could give me directions, perhaps?”

“Better-than that, I’ll come with you—if I may?”

“Of course.” Unaccountably she was blushing. “But I don’t want to upset any of your own plans.”

“You won’t. If you’re ready, we’ll see if we can close the Kylsaig Gap and put a girdle round the island— though not in forty minutes.”

After the easy first part, the paths became rougher, and she was glad of his firm hand to help her across a boulder-strewn clearing at the edge of a wood and then across' another sizeable burn.

“I wouldn’t have had the courage to jump that alone,” she confessed.

He led her through a grassy tangle behind yet another ruined croft and finally they came out on a well-defined sheep track high above the shore. Away to the right below, she could see the old ruined pier.

“Oh, now I know where I am,” she said. “But you’ve cheated. You didn’t really go round the edge. You cut off a corner.”

“True, but unless you wanted to go into bogs up to your knees, the way we came was the only one.” He turned to look her full in the face. “And, if I’m not mistaken, you also cheated this morning. I doubt if you hugged the shore from Barbara’s up to the place where I found you. You cut across just above the ferry.”

She grinned guiltily. “Yes, I forgot that. Well, thank you, anyway. I should never have found my way here.”

“The island doesn’t yield up all its secrets to all comers. Kylsaig likes to reveal itself a little at a time.”

“But I thought you were hoping to develop the island, make it more prosperous,” she pointed out. “How can it be attractive if people can’t find their way about?”

“I do want to make Kylsaig a pleasant little place, attractive to just a few of the right kind of tourists—and the right kind are those who don’t want concrete ribbon roads stretching in front of them, but are willing to take whatever may turn up in their wanderings.”

She was stung by his rebuke. “Nobody expects Kylsaig to be paved,” she snapped.

“Don’t be indignant because you couldn’t find your own way.” He smiled at her, but his eyes were mocking. “Also, I want Kylsaig to be attractive to the inhabitants so that they can go on living here and find enough work of one sort or another. The young ones drift away and the old ones die off. Take young Donald Fraser, the ferryman’s eldest boy. You saw him on Saturday running the ferryboat, and he does it very well. He has a fancy for engineering, but what kind of job is he going to find here? He’s nearly sixteen. In a few weeks he’ll have to make the decision to leave home altogether and go down to Glasgow or somewhere like that to be apprenticed, or he’ll stay here for a while and drive a grocery van in 'Cruban. He may go into a garage to pick up a few scraps of knowledge. In the end he’ll be tempted by the big money and he’ll finish up on an assembly line in a Coventry car factory. The important thing is that he’ll never come back, except for holidays. He’ll marry, have children —and that’s another family lost.”

“But you can hardly expect every boy to take up sheep-farming or running a ferry. All boys and girls realise that the world is a wide place with endless opportunities of earning a living in an interesting way.” Judith spoke as passionately as Stuart had. “You can’t keep them here if they don’t want to stay. You’re just being—well, feudal!” He turned towards her. “Feudal! Is it feudal to want better conditions for the people here?”

“No, but it’s the twentieth century and—”

“Exactly. Your sister and brother-in-law could do with a handy little pier—down there where those ruins are.”

He waved his arm angrily in that direction. “Then you wouldn’t have the pleasure of tramping up from the ferry every time you come back from the mainland. In my grandfather’s time there was a very solid little slipway, but eventually it was neglected. Not enough people used it, so it fell apart and then people couldn’t use it. I don’t think my father would have been interested in saving it, even if he had lived, but when I try to rebuild it, I’m accused of wanting to turn the island into a rowdy holiday resort with fun-fairs and juke-boxes.”

“Why should anybody think you want to go to such extremes?” she asked.

“Oh, they talk about the thin end of the wedge and the shore being dotted with caravans and holiday camps in a few years’ time. There’s little co-operation at all.”

Hopelessness clouded his eyes.

“Andy is all in favour of your schemes,” she ventured.

“And your sister, too?”

Judith turned her head away and was silent.

After a pause he said, “Come on, let’s go down and see how my new Brighton Pier with its domes and fun-palaces is getting on. A new load of stone is supposed to have arrived.”

They turned off the track and he led her down the rough grassy hillside. When the going became steep or there were boulders to negotiate, he grasped her hand. The' shore was fringed with rank, coarse grass and thistles and in some places it was hard to tell which was firm land or where the sea had encroached to leave a perpetual swamp.

“Once this was a snug little inn.” Stuart pointed to the great heap of dark grey stones half covered with weeds and bramble. Only a fragment of one wall remained standing. “Men sheltered from the weather, and laughed and gossiped over their whisky. But I’m going to build a new inn.” He flung the words into the air as though challenging the elements as well as human opposition.