Huntingtower

Dickson McCunn

Dickson McCunn has spent forty years weighing out sugar and tea, and now, at fifty-five, he is loose in the world with a knapsack and a taste for romance he never admitted to himself. His wife has gone to the hydropathic, his business is sold, and he is quietly terrified that adventure will prove as disappointing as a bad consignment of cheese. What makes him matter is that he brings a merchant's caution and a boy's hunger for glory to a fight that needs both.

John Heritage

Heritage is a man of letters who has been in the war and come out of it with a limp and a restlessness that verse cannot cure. He is hiding in Mrs. Morran's loft when Dickson arrives, and his presence transforms a walking holiday into something far more dangerous. He is brave, sardonic, and reckless in a way that makes him both an asset and a liability to the small band gathering around the mystery of Huntingtower.

Dougal

Dougal is the leader of the Gorbals Die-Hards, a band of Glasgow street boys who have come to Galloway for a holiday and found instead a cause worth fighting for. He speaks in military jargon, keeps a Chief of Staff, and treats the crisis at Huntingtower as a campaign to be won by reconnaissance and nerve. His loyalty to Dickson and his resourcefulness in the field make him indispensable to the defence of the House.

Saskia

Saskia was a glittering figure in Petrograd before the revolution scattered her world, and now she is a prisoner in a remote Scottish house, hunted for the jewels she may or may not possess. She is proud, resourceful, and unwilling to be a passive victim, and her flight from the House sets the whole adventure in motion. The men who gather to help her are drawn by her plight and by something in her that commands loyalty.

Sir Archibald Roylance

Sir Archie is a laird of the neighbourhood, fresh from the war and restless for peacetime excitement. He knows the country, the people, and the shortcuts, and his willingness to throw in his lot with Dickson and the boys gives the small force a respectability and a mobility it badly needs. He is good-humoured, slightly reckless, and exactly the sort of ally a retired grocer could not have anticipated.

Mrs. Morran

Mrs. Morran takes Dickson in as a lodger and quickly becomes the quartermaster and comic conscience of the whole enterprise. She plays the part of the affectionate aunt with such conviction that she reduces herself to helpless laughter once the post-cart is out of sight. Her scones, her jam, and her willingness to march on the Tower with five boys and a middle-aged man make her the unlikely heart of the resistance.