We had seen the sun go down in the west from the top of Cairn Gorm and, discussing the matter on our way round the corrie, we had left it to the toss of a coin to decide where to go to watch him rise again. We were well accoutred for a night in the open and, on arriving at the Stone, we found that its last tenants had paid their rent by leaving a slab of chocolate, a packet of Woodbines and an empty half-bottle of Johnnie Walker — not, mark you, a half-empty bottle — all wrapped in packing paper that bore the half-obliterated name ‘Bon Accord…’ So we knew that our predecessors came from the Granite City. The empty bottle was apostrophised by one of the party, ‘Ho, ho! A scurvy legacy indeed!’

It is the unwritten and never-broken law of the Shelter Stone that you shall pay for your keep and so, after eating their chocolate and smoking their Woodbines, we paid our rent by leaving a box of a dozen of John Cotton’s ‘Edinburgh’, an apple and just enough whisky in the half-bottle to tantalise those who came after. But that was done in the darkest hour before dawn and we had still time to spend before setting out again. None of us thought of sleep. We thanked our stars that the night was fine; we talked of ‘shoes and sealing wax and whether pigs had wings’. McGilky went down to Loch Avon to boast that he had bathed in it at one in the morning, and Hugh and I followed him to prove that he shirked the shock—which he did.