and squashy patches of moss and peat. And anyhow, as Roger pointed out, the people who had built his Pict-house had discovered the valley pretty near the beginning of the world. Also, later inhabitants, cutting peats for winter fuel, had left deep trenches, some of them too wide to be jumped across. Good places to hide in, they agreed, but wasting a lot of time when you had to walk round them instead of going straight ahead.
They had been walking for a long time. Deer, moving on the flats below them, had made them forget the native settlement on the other side of the ridge. Roger was leading the way. Dorothea was close behind him. Roger had said something about exploration being wasted on Dick, and Dorothea was explaining that there were more kinds of exploration than one and that birds, for Dick, were a part of exploration that really mattered, and that anyway Dick was as good an explorer as Roger. “Who got first to the North Pole?” Titty heard her say, and then, though Dorothea went on talking, and Roger too. Titty did not hear a word. She had suddenly got the queerest feeling that they were not alone.
Down in the bottom, well behind them now, she knew that Dick was somewhere by the lochs. Further away still, she knew that Captain Flint and the four scrubbers were hard at work scraping and painting the Sea Bear before the tide could come up once more and float her off. So far as she could see there was no one else in the valley and the three explorers had the hillside to themselves. Yet, suddenly, she had the feeling that they were being watched, and watched from close at hand. She looked all round her, but could see nothing but rocky slopes and patches of heather and moss. There were no trees, no bushes. She shook herself, hurried on and tried to hear the end of Dot’s argument about different kinds of explorers. Of course there was nobody there, nobody but the three of them, walking the hillside in sunshine under a wide blue sky.
A little later she had that feeling again. It was as if she were reading a book and someone had come up unseen and were reading it over her shoulder.
“Dot!” she said.
“Hullo,” said Dorothea. “Want a rest?”
“Oh, not just yet,” said Roger.
“What is it?” said Dorothea.
“Nothing. Sorry,” said Titty. It was clear that neither of the others had felt what she had felt. And now, with the two of them stopping and looking back at her, she did not feel it herself.
“More deer,” said Roger. “Dot, you’ve got my telescope.”
Down below them on the wide flats in the bottom of the valley a herd of hinds were grazing like cattle.
“They look as tame as anything,” said Roger.
“They wouldn’t let us get near them,” said Dorothea.
“Let’s try,” said Roger, “stalking …”
“No, no,” said Titty. “We haven’t got half as far as we meant to do. If we go down now we won’t see anything. Let’s keep on and not go down till it’s time to start home.”
“I’ve never seen them before except at the Zoo,” said Dorothea.
“I expect they belong to those natives,” said Titty.
“In winter,” said Dorothea, “the natives harness them like reindeer and fly in sledges over the snow.”
“Bet they don’t,” said Roger. “Hullo!”
From a patch of heather only a hundred yards ahead of them, a huge stag rose to his feet and was gone, in great leaps, down the slopes towards the head of the valley. All the deer grazing below stopped feeding and began to move.
“Keep still,” said Titty.
“I’m glad he didn’t charge this way,” said Roger. “But I didn’t think much of his horns. Did you?”
“Perhaps they’ll grow,” said Dorothea.
Presently the deer below stopped moving and began to graze once more.
“Come on,” said Roger, and the explorers set out again.
“They’ve seen us,” said Dorothea. “They’ll be off again in a minute.”
“We can’t help it,” said Titty. “Let’s just keep going and then they’ll see we’re not trying to stalk them.”
“Pretty hard to stalk,” said Roger. “I expect they’re accustomed to it and know just what to do.”
It was clear that the deer in the valley knew very well that there were explorers moving along the hillside above them. They kept lifting their heads, and shifting a few hundred yards, stopping and then once more walking on.
“They won’t let us get anywhere near them,” said Dorothea. “They probably don’t approve of being stalked. I wouldn’t like it myself.”
Again Titty had that queer feeling. She turned suddenly towards the top of the ridge. Just for a second she thought she saw something move beside a rock close under the skyline, but she stared at the place and could see nothing but the rock itself.
“Dot,” she said, “look up there, where there’s a big rock sticking right up out of the heather.”
“What is it? Another stag?”
“No,” said Titty. “I believe we’re being stalked ourselves.”
“Not really?” said Dorothea.
“Yes, really,” said Titty. “I’m sure we are.”
“Keep still,” said Roger, “and listen. And throw up your heads. We ought to sniff the wind like the deer. And the wind’s just right. It’s coming from up there.”
For a minute or two the three explorers stood still as rabbits that have scented danger but do not yet know where it is. Their eyes searched this way and that along the ridge. Not a thing was moving.
“There’s no harm in pretending,” said Dorothea. “We could be prisoners escaped from the castle, with the villain hunting us for our lives.”
“I wasn’t pretending,” said Titty.
Roger looked at her, and so did Dorothea. No. She was not pretending. Titty really did believe that on that wild hillside above them somebody was watching them and keeping hid.
“I thought so before,” said Titty, “but I wasn’t sure.”
“If we are being stalked,” said Dorothea, “the thing to do is to pretend we don’t know. We must just go on, pretending we don’t know we’re being stalked, and all the time getting further and further away.”
“And then the stalker will get a bit careless and let himself be seen,” said Roger. “And then, when we know who it is and where he is, we’ll know what to do next.”
“It’s a pity we stopped,” said Dorothea.
“We could be picking flowers,” said Titty, looking about her and, as it happened, not finding any.
“Fossils,” said Dorothea.
