He must get alone, get somewhere high out of all this crowding of
commonness, of everyday life.

He made his way to the top of Arthur's Seat, and there he sat for a long
time in the golden evening sunshine, still, except that ever and again
he whispered to himself some precious phrase that had stuck in his mind.

'If,' he whispered, 'if only we could pick that lock. . . .'

The sun was sinking over the distant hills. Already it was shorn of its
beams, a globe of ruddy gold, hanging over the great banks of cloud that
would presently engulf it.

'Eh!' said the youngster. 'Eh!'

He seemed to wake up at last out of his entrancement, and the red
sun was there before his eyes. He stared at it, at first without
intelligence, and then with a gathering recognition. Into his mind
came a strange echo of that ancestral fancy, that fancy of a Stone Age
savage, dead and scattered bones among the drift two hundred thousand
years ago.

'Ye auld thing,' he said--and his eyes were shining, and he made a kind
of grabbing gesture with his hand; 'ye auld red thing.... We'll have ye
YET.'




CHAPTER THE FIRST