Jonathan: What I didn’t tell you last time is what I found when I went out to check on the ponies …   All afternoon we’d seen Alasdair up on the skyline of Cnoc a Deas, whinnying whenever we we appeared in the garden – he didn’t seem at all bothered about keeping poor old Midnight company, out there on the far side of the Cnoc!  When I went out to check up on them last thing before bed-time, I found Alasdair down on the road by the house – and a passing car swerving to avoid him.  I tried to coax him back up on to the hill, but he was having none of it – in fact he was trying to find a way across or around the cattle grid by the house – as if he was trying to get back the way we’d travelled in the morning.  Clearly he needed to be tethered, certainly for tonight, so I set off for the croft store, over in Eriskay, for a longer length of rope. But when I got back Alasdair was nowhere to be seen: I searched all over the headland with a torch, but not a sign or sound of him. When I got back to the house, a car was pulling up into our drive and I suddenly realised it was Denise – she’d received a phone call from a neighbour saying a pony was out on the road at Smercleit, and not finding me she’d set out in the car to look for Alasdair. So off we went together in the car, finding occasional ‘waymarks’ on the road, telling us where he’d been, but not where he was now.  After checking all the township roads and scanning across the fields the machair and the shore with the big torch, we realized we weren’t going to find him on our own, and returned to the house. I phoned Eòghann to ask advice, but he’d already received a call from a bodoch (old man) at Smercleit Taobh a Tuath to say a pony was in his garden – the assumption hereabouts is that if its a pony, it must be Eòghann’s. They’d agreed that Alasdair was safe enough where he was – he could stay there until the morning.  This morning, however, Alasdair was found to be safe and well back in the field we’d taken him from in the morning – he must have found his way along the road in the night, and jumped the fence or gate.  Where there’s a will, there’s a way, they say!  Thinking about it today, I realized that the north wind would have carried with it the scent of the two females left at Trossaraidh. I mentioned this to Eòghann, and he admitted it was a mistke to take away the two males together.  The upshot of this is that Alasdair will stay with the others, and I’ve just got Midnight to look after.  At 16 years old, he’s a placid old thing, very easy to get along with: he calls out when he wants moving, and always seems pleased to get a stroke and a scratch and a fresh circle of tasty grass.