The Free Fishers

John Buchan

Chapter 1 In Which a Young Man is Afraid of His Youth

Mr Anthony Lammas, whose long legs had been covering ground at the rate of five miles an hour, slackened his pace, for he felt the need of ordering a mind which for some hours had been dancing widdershins. For one thing the night had darkened, since the moon had set, and the coast track which he followed craved wary walking. But it was the clear dark of a northern April, when, though the details are blurred, the large masses of the landscape are apprehended. He was still aware of little headlands descending to a shadowy gulf which was the Firth. Far out the brazier on the May was burning with a steady glow, like some low-swung planet shaming with its ardour the cold stars. He sniffed the sharp clean scent of the whins above the salt; he could almost detect the brightness of their flowering. They should have been thyme, he thought, thyme and arbutus and tamarisk clothing the capes of the Sicilian sea, for this was a night of Theocritus… .

Theocritus! What had he to do with Theocritus? It was highly necessary to come to terms with this mood into which he had fallen.

For Mr Lammas, a licensed minister of the Kirk and a professor in the University of St Andrews, had just come from keeping strange company. Three years ago, through the good offices of his patron and friend, Lord Snowdoun, he had been appointed to the Chair of Logic and Rhetoric, with emoluments which, with diet money and kain-hens, reached the sum of £309 a year, a fortune for a provident bachelor. His father, merchant and boat-builder in the town of Dysart, had left him also a small patrimony, so that he was in no way cumbered with material cares. His boyhood had been crowded with vagrant ambitions. At the burgh school he had hankered after the sea; later, the guns in France had drawn him to a soldier's life, and he had got as far as Burntisland before a scandalised parent reclaimed him. Then scholarship had laid its spell on him. He had stridden to the top of his Arts classes in St Andrews, and at Edinburgh had been well thought of as a theologian. His purpose then was the lettered life, and he had hopes of the college living of Tweedsmuir, far off in the southern moorlands, where he might cultivate the Muses and win some such repute as that of Mr Beattie at Aberdeen.

But Lord Snowdoun had shown him the way to better things, for to be a professor at twenty-five was to have a vantage-ground for loftier ascents. In the Logic part of his duties he had little interest, contenting himself with an exposition of Mr Reid's Inquiry and some perfunctory lectures on Descartes, but in the Rhetoric classes, which began after Candlemas, his soul expanded, and he had made himself a name for eloquence. Also he had discovered an aptitude for affairs, and was already entrusted with the heavy end of college business. A year ago he had been appointed Questor, a post which carried the management of the small academic revenues. He stood well with his colleagues, well with the students, and behind him was Lord Snowdoun, that potent manager of Scotland. Some day he would be Principal, when he would rival the fame of old Tullidelph, and meantime as a writer he would win repute far beyond the narrow shores of Fife. Had he not in his bureau a manuscript treatise on the relations of art and morals which, when he re-read it, astounded him by its acumen and wit, and a manuscript poem on the doings of Cardinal Beatoun which he could not honestly deem inferior to the belauded verse of Mr Walter Scott!

So far the path of ambition, in which for a man of twenty-eight he had made notable progress. Neat in person, a little precise in manner, his mouth primmed to a becoming gravity, his hair brushed back from his forehead to reveal a lofty brow, Mr Lammas was the very pattern of a dignitary in the making… . And yet an hour ago he had been drinking toddy with shaggy seafarers, and joining lustily in the chorus of "Cocky Bendy," and the tune to which his long legs had been marching was "Dunbarton's Drums." He was still whistling it:

 

"Dunbarton's drums are bonnie O—

I'll leave a' my friends and my daddie O—

I'll bide nae mair at hame, but I'll follow wi' the drum,

And whenever it beats I'll be ready O."

 

This was a pretty business for a minister of the Kirk, the Questor of St Andrews, and a professor of divine philosophy.

There was a long story behind it. As a boy his playground had been the little rock-girt port of Dysart, and as the son of honest David Lammas, who could build a smack with any man between Berwick and Aberdeen, he had been made free of the harbour life. His intimates had been men who took their herring busses far north into the cold Shetland seas, whalers who sailed yearly for the Färoes and Iceland and still stranger waters, skippers of Dutch luggers and Norway brigs who leavened their lawful merchantry with commodities not approved by law. He learned their speech and the tricks of their calling, and listened greedily to their tales through many a summer twilight. Sometimes he went to the fishing himself in the shore-cobles, but his dream was to sail beyond the May to the isles of the basking sharks and the pilot-whales and the cliffs snowy with sea-fowl. Only the awe of his father kept him from embarking one fine morning in a Middleburg lugger with tulips in its cabin, and a caged singing-bird whose pipe to his ear was the trumpet of all romance.

There was a brotherhood among the sea-folk as close and secret as a masonic order. Its name was the Free Fishers of Forth, but its name was not often spoken. To be a member was to have behind one, so long as one obeyed its rules, a posse of stalwart allies. It had been founded long ago—no man knew when, though there were many legends. Often it had fallen foul of the law, as in the Jacobite troubles, when it had ferried more than one much-sought gentlemen between France and Scotland. Its ostensible purpose was the protection of fisher rights, and a kind of co-operative insurance against the perils of the sea, but these rights were generously interpreted, and there had been times when free-trade was its main concern, and the east-coast gaugers led a weary life. But the war with France had drawn it to greater things. Now and then the ship of a Free Fisher may have conveyed an escaping French prisoner to his own country, but it is certain that they brought home many a British refugee who had struggled down to the Breton shore. Also the fraternity did famous secret services. They had their own private ways of gleaning news, and were often high in repute with an anxious Government. Letters would arrive by devious ways for this or that member, and a meeting would follow in some nook of the coast with cloaked men who did not easily grasp the Fife speech. More than once the Chief Fisher, old Sandy Kyles, had consulted in Edinburgh behind guarded doors with the Lord Advocate himself.

To the boy the Free Fishers had been the supreme authority of his world, far more potent than the King in London. He cherished every hint of their doings that came to him, but he fell in docilely with the ritual and asked no questions. As he grew older he learned more, and his notion of the brotherhood was clarified; some day he would be a member of it like his father before him. But when he chose the path of scholarship he had to revise his ambitions, since the society was confined strictly to those whose business lay with the sea. Yet the harbour-side was still his favourite haunt, and he went on adding to his seafaring friendships.

"I'll tell you what," he told his chief ally, Tam Dorrit. "If I cannot be a member, I'll be your chaplain. When I'm a minister you'll appoint me. King George has his chaplain, and Lord Snowdoun, and all the great folk, and what for no the Free Fishers?"

The notion, offered half in jest, simmered in the heads of the brotherhood, for they liked the lad and did not want to lose him, if fate should send him to some landward parish. So it came about that when Mr Lammas had passed his trials and won his licence to preach, a special sederunt of the Free Fishers took place, and he was duly appointed their chaplain, with whatever rights, perquisites and privileges might inhere in that dignity. In due course he was installed at a supper, where the guests, a little awed by the shadow of the Kirk, comported themselves with a novel sobriety. Then for a year or two he saw nothing of them. He was engaged by Lord Snowdoun as the governor of his heir, the young Lord Belses, and passed his time between the great house of Snowdoun under the Ochils, the lesser seat of Catlaw in Tweeddale, and his lordship's town lodgings in Edinburgh. Ambition had laid its spell on him, high-jinks were a thing of the past, and he was traversing that stage of ruthless wordly-wisdom which follows on the passing of a man's first youth. It was a far cry from the echoing chambers and orderly terraces of Snowdoun or the deep heather of Catlaw to the windy beaches of Fife.

But with his return to St Andrews he found himself compelled to pick up the threads of his youth. The stage of premature middle-age had passed, and left him with a solid ambition, indeed, but with a more catholic outlook on the world. He had to deal with young men, and his youth was his chief asset; he had strong aspirations after literary success—in youthful spheres, too, like poetry and fantastic essays. He dared not bolt the door against a past which he saw daily in happier colours. The Free Fishers had not forgotten him. They had solemnly congratulated their chaplain on his new dignity, and they invited him to their quarterly gatherings at this or that port of the Firth. The message was never by letter; it would come by devious means, a whispered word in the street or at the harbour-side or on the links from some shaggy emissary who did not wait to be questioned.

At first Mr Lammas had been shy of the business. Could a preceptor of youth indulge in what was painfully akin to those extravagances of youth against which the Senatus warred? He had obeyed the first summons with a nervous heart, and afterwards the enterprise was always undertaken in the deepest secrecy. No chaise or saddle-horse for him; his legs carried him in the evening to the rendezvous, however distant, and brought him back in the same fashion. From the side of the Free Fishers, however, he knew that he need fear nothing, for they were silent as the tomb. So into the routine of his life came these hiatuses of romance with a twofold consequence. They kept his hand in for his dealings with his pupils. He became "Nanty" to the whole undergraduate world, from the bejant to the magistrand. His classes were popular and orderly, and many consulted him on private concerns which they would not have broached to any other professor. Also, as if to salve his conscience, he began to cultivate a special gravity in his deportment. Among his colleagues he spoke little, but what he said was cogent; he acquired a name for whinstone common sense; he was a little feared and widely trusted. Soon his gravity became a second nature, and his long upper lip was a danger-signal to folly. Yet all the while he was nursing his private fire of romance in the manuscripts accumulating in his study drawers, and once in a while those fires were permitted to flicker in public. After a dull day of Senatus meetings, when he would reprehend the plunderings by his colleagues of the College library, or frame new rules for the compulsory Sunday service in St Leonard's Kirk and the daily Prayer-hall at St Mary's, or bicker with Dr Wotherspoon, the Professor of Moral Philosophy, over the delimitations of his subject, he would find himself among his boyhood's friends, bandying queer by-names and joining in most unacademic choruses.

This night the supper had been at Pittenweem. All day Mr Lammas had been engaged on high affairs. There was trouble over the University revenue from the Priory lands, which was a discretionary grant from the Exchequer; Government had shown itself unwilling to renew it on the old terms, and it had been decided that Mr Lammas should proceed forthwith to London, lay the matter before Lord Snowdoun, and bespeak his lordship's interest. It was a notable compliment to the young man, and a heavy responsibility. Also he had received a letter from Lord Mannour, who as Mr Peter Kinloch had been the University's standing counsel, begging him to wait upon him without delay in Edinburgh. Mr Lammas, cumbered with such cares and about to set out on a difficult journey, had been in no mood for the Free Fishers, and had almost let the occasion slip. But some perverse loyalty had set his feet on the shore-road, and for some hours he had been absorbed, not unhappily, into a fantastic world.

The sederunt had been the queerest in his recollection. The great boat-shed on the edge of the tide had been bright at first with a red sunset, but presently the April dusk had gathered, and ships' lanterns, swung from the rafters, had made patches of light among its shadows. Beneath, round the rude table, had sat fifty and more shaggy seafarers, each one entering the guarded door with the password for the night. Old Sandy Kyles was dead, and in the chair of the Chief Fisher sat Eben Garnock, a mountainous man with a beard like Moses and far-sighted blue eyes beneath pent-house brows. There were gaps in the familiar company, and Mr Lammas heard how one had lost his boat and his life off the Bass in the great January storm, and another had shipwrecked at Ushant and was now in a French gaol. But there was a goodly number of old friends—Tam Dorrit, who had once taken him on a memorable run to the Eastern Banks; Andrew Cairns, who had sailed his smack far into the unpermitted Baltic; the old man Stark who, said rumour, had been a pirate in western waters; and young Bob Muschat, a new member, who had bird-nested with him many a Saturday in the Dunnikier woods. There were faces that were new to him, and he noted that they were of a wilder cast than those he first remembered. The war was drawing the Free Fishers into odd paths. There were men there who had been pressed for the Navy and had seen Trafalgar, men who had manned privateers and fought obscure fights in forgotten seas, men who on Government business had talked in secret chambers with great folk and risked their lives in the dark of the moon. It was not his recovered boyhood that Mr Lammas saw, but a segment of a grimmer world whose echoes came faintly at intervals to St Andrews halls.

The company had been piped to meat by a bosun's whistle, and they had said the Fisher's Grace, which begins:

 

"For flukes and partans, cakes and ale,

Salty beef and seein' kale—"

 

and concludes with a petition for the same mercies at the next meeting. There was no formality round their table, but there was decorum, the decorum of men for whom the world was both merry and melancholy. They faced death daily, so even in their cups they could not be children. Mighty eaters and drinkers, good fare only loosed their tongues. Mr Lammas heard tales which he knew would haunt his dreams. When they forsook ale for whisky-toddy, brewed in great blue bowls of Dutch earthenware, the first songs began. He drank liquors new to him, in particular a brew of rum, burned and spiced, which ran in his veins like a pleasant fire. His precision was blown aside like summer mist; he joined lustily in the choruses; himself he sang "Dunbarton's Drums" in his full tenor; his soul melted and expanded till he felt a kindness towards all humanity and a poet's glory in the richness of the world.

This high mood had accompanied his striding under the spring moon for three-quarters of his homeward journey. His fancy had been kindled by glimpses into marvels—marvels casually mentioned as common incidents of life. One man had sailed round the butt of Norway to Archangel, and on returning had been blocked for five days among icebergs. "Like heidstanes in a kirkyaird," he had said—"I hae still the grue of them in my banes." Another had gone into the Arctic among the great whales, and stammered a tale—he had some defect in his speech—of waters red like a battlefield, of creatures large as a hill rolling and sighing in their death-throes, and of blood rising in forty-foot spouts and drenching the decks like rain. Still another, a little man with a mild face and a mouth full of texts, had been cast away on the Portugal coast, and had shipped in a Spanish boat and spent two years in the rotting creeks of the Main. "God's wonders in the deep!" he had cried. "Maybe, but it's the Deil's wonders in yon unco land," and, being a little drunk, he had babbled of blood-sucking plants and evil beasts and men more evil. Poetry churned in Mr Lammas's head, and he strung phrases which ravished him… .

But the excitement was ebbing, and "Dunbarton's Drums" was dying in his ears. He was almost across the King's Muir, and could see the first lights of St Andrews twinkling in the hollow. With an effort he pulled himself together. He was returning to duty, and must put away childish things.

Suddenly he was aware of a figure on his left. He saw it only as a deeper shadow in the darkness, but he heard its feet on the gravel of the track. A voice caused him to relax the grip which had tightened on his staff; it was a voice he knew.

"You have the pace of me, sir." The owner of the voice dropped into step.

Had there been light to see, the face of Mr Lammas would have been observed to fall into lines of professorial dignity.

"You walk late, Mr Kinloch," he said.

"Like yourself, sir, and for the same cause. I, too, have been in loco… . Dulce est desipere, you know. Old Braxfield used to translate the line, 'How blessed it is now and then to talk noansense'!"

"I do not follow."

"I mean that I had the honour of supping in your company, sir. Of supping under your benediction. I am the latest recruit to the honourable company of the Free Fishers."

Mr Lammas was startled. Here was his secret disclosed with a vengeance, for one of his own pupils shared it. His safety lay in the Fishers' Oath and also in the character of the participant. By the mercy of Providence this lad, Jock Kinloch, and he had always been on friendly terms. The only son of Lord Mannour, the judge whom he was trysted to meet on the morrow, he was unlike the ordinary boys from the country manse, the burgh shop or the plough-tail. Among the two hundred there was at the moment no "primar," that is, a nobleman's son, and Jock ranked as one of the few "secondars" or scions of the gentry. He was a stirring youth, often at odds with authority, and he had more than once been before the Rector and his assessors at the suit of an outraged St Andrews townsman. He was popular among his fellows, for he had money to spend and spent it jovially, his laugh was the loudest at the dismal students' table in St Leonards, on the links he smote a mighty ball, he was esteemed a bold rider with the Fife Hunt, and he donned the uniform of the Fencibles. No scholar and a sparing attendant at lectures, he had nevertheless revealed a certain predilection for the subjects which Mr Lammas professed, had won a prize for debate in the Logic class, and in Rhetoric had shown a gift for declamation and a high-coloured taste in English style. He had written poetry, too, galloping iambics in the fashionable mode, and excursions in the vernacular after the manner of Burns. Sometimes of an evening in the Professor's lodgings there would be a session of flamboyant literary talk, and once or twice Mr Lammas had been on the brink of unlocking his study drawer and disclosing his own pursuit of the Muses. For most of his pupils he had a kindliness, but for Jock Kinloch he felt something like affection.

"It is an old story with me," he said primly. "It goes back to my Dysart boyhood, when I was never away from the harbour-side. I have kept up the link out of sentiment, Mr Kinloch. As one grows older one is the more tenderly affectioned to the past."

The young man laughed.

"You needn't apologise to me, sir. I honour you for this night's cantrip—maybe I had always a notion of something of the sort, for there must be that in you that keeps the blood young compared to the sapless kail-runts of the Senatus. I had thought it might be a woman."

"You thought wrong," was the icy answer. Mr Lammas was a little offended.

"Apparently I did, and I make you my apologies for a clumsy guess." The boy's tone was respectful, but Mr Lammas knew that, could he see it, there was a twinkle in the black eyes. Jock Kinloch's eyes were dark as a gipsy's and full of audacious merriment.

"Maybe yon queer folk at Pittenweem," he went on, "brew a better elixir of youth than any woman. They were doubtless more circumspect at your end of the table, but at my end the tongues were slack and I got some wild tales. It would have done that douce St Andrews folk a world of good to sit down at yon board and hear the great Professor ask the blessing… . But no, no," he added, as if conscious of some mute protest from his companion, "they'll never hear a word of it from me. There's the Fishers' Oath between us. You'll be Professor Anthony Lammas as before, the man that keeps the Senatus in order and guides my erring steps in the paths of logic and good taste, and Nanty Lammas will be left among the partans and haddies and tarpots of Pittenweem."

"I am obliged to you, Mr Kinloch. As you say, the oath is between us, and the Free Fishers sup always under the rose."

The boy edged closer to his companion. The lights of the town were growing near—few in number, for the hour was late. He laid a hand upon Mr Lammas's arm.

"There's more in the oath than secrecy, sir," he said; "there's a promise of mutual aid. I took pains to make up on you, for I wanted to ask a favour from you as from a brother in the mystery. I want information, and maybe I want advice. Will you give it me?"

"Speak on." Mr Lammas, his mind at ease, was well disposed to this garrulous youth.

"It's just this. When you finished college you were tutor in my Lord Snowdoun's family? You were the governor of his eldest son and prepared him for Oxford? Am I right, sir?"

"I was governor to the young Lord Belses, and for two years lived in his lordship's company."

"Well, I'd like to know what kind of a fellow he is. I don't want to hear about a brilliant and promising young nobleman—born to a great estate—a worthy successor of his father—bilge-pipe stuff like that. I want a judgment of him from an honest man, whose hand must have often itched for his ears."

"I assure you it never did. There was much in Harry I did not understand, but there was little to offend me. He was a most hopeful scholar, with taste and knowledge beyond his years. He was an adept at sports in which I could not share. His manners were remarkable for their urbanity and in person he was altogether pleasing."

"In short, a damned pompous popinjay!"

"I said nothing of the kind, and let me tell you that it ill-becomes you, Mr Kinloch, to speak thus of one of whom you can know nothing. Have you become a Jacobin to rave against rank? Have you ever seen the young lord?"

"Aye, I have seen him twice." The boy spoke moodily. "Once he came out with the Hunt. He was the best mounted of the lot of us, and I won't deny he can ride. At first I took the fences side by side with him, but my old Wattie Wud-spurs was no match for his blood beast, and I was thrown out before the kill. He spoke to me, and he was so cursed patronising I could have throttled him. Minced his words like an affected school-miss."

"I see in that no cause for offence."

"No, but the second time he gave me cause—weighty cause, by God. It was at Mount Mordun, at the Hogmanay ball, and he came with Kirsty Evandale's party. Kirsty was to be my partner in the first eightsome, and she jilted me, by gad—looked through me when I went to claim her—and danced all night with that rotten lordling."

"Your grievance seems to lie rather against Miss Christian Evandale."

"No—she was beguiled—women are weak things. There were the rest of us—country bumpkins compared to this spruce dandy, with the waist of a girl and the steps of a dancing-master. There was me—not a word to say for myself—boiling with passion and blushing and fuming—and all the time as gawky as a gander… . You say there has never been a woman in your life. Well, there's one in mine—Kirsty. I'm so crazily in love with her that she obscures daylight for me. They tell me that the Snowdouns want to make a match of it with Belses, for they are none too well off for grandees, and Kirsty will own half the land between Ore and Eden… . Now here is what I want to know. What about the popinjay? Is he scent and cambric and gold chains and silk waistcoats and nothing more, or is there a man behind the millinery? For if there's a man, I'm determined to come to grips with him."

The two were now under the shadow of the ruined tower of St Regulus, and their feet were on the southward cobbles of the little city.

"Dear me, you are very peremptory," said Mr Lammas. "You summon me like an advocate with an unfriendly witness."

"I summon you by the Fishers' Oath," said the boy. "I know that what you say will be honest and true."

"I am obliged, and I will answer you, but my knowledge stops short five years back. When I knew Harry he was immature—there was no question of a man—he was only boy and dreamer. But I can bear witness to a warm heart, a just mind and a high spirit. He may end as a fantastic, but not as a fop or a fool. He made something of a name at Christ Church, I understand, has travelled much in Europe, and has now entered Parliament. I have heard rumour of some extravagance in his political views, but I have heard no charge against his character. Your picture does not fit in with my recollection, Mr Kinloch, and you will do well to revise it. A dainty dress and deportment do not necessarily imply effeminacy, just as rudeness is no proof of courage."

"You think he will fight, then?"

"Fight? What is this talk of fighting?"

"Simply that if he is going to cast his glamour over Kirsty, I'll have him out by hook or by crook. I'm so damnably in love with her that I'll stick at nothing."

"You are a foolish child. If I did my duty I would report you to—"

"The Fishers' Oath! Remember the Fishers' Oath—Nanty Lammas!" He darted down a side street without further word, as the clock on the town-kirk steeple struck the hour of twelve.

Chapter 2 In Which Lord Mannour Discourses

Mr Lammas tumbled into bed in the closet behind his living-room, and fell instantly asleep, for he was drowsy with salt air and many long Scots miles. There seemed but an instant between his head touching the pillow and the knuckles of his landlady, Mrs Babbie McKelvie, sounding on his door. "It's chappit five, Professor," her voice followed. "Ye'll mind ye maun be on the road by seven."

He rose in a very different mood from that of the night before. Now he was the learned professor, the trusted emissary of his university, setting out on a fateful journey. Gravity fell upon him like a frost. He shaved himself carefully, noting with approval the firm set of his chin and the growing height of his forehead as the hair retreated. A face, he flattered himself, to command respect. His locks had been newly cut by Jimmy Jardine, the college barber, and he subdued their vagaries with a little pomatum. His dress was sober black, his linen was fresh, and he had his father's seals at his fob; but, since he was to travel the roads, he wore his second-best pantaloons and he strapped strong frieze leggings round the lower part of them. Then he examined the rest of his travelling wardrobe, the breeches and buckled shoes to be worn on an occasion of ceremony, the six fine cravats Mrs McKelvie had hemmed for him, the six cambric shirts which were the work of the same needlewoman, the double-breasted waistcoat of wool and buckram to be worn if the weather grew chilly. He was content with his preparations, and packed his valise with a finicking neatness. He was going south of the Border into unknown country, going to the metropolis itself to uphold his university's cause among strangers. St Andrews should not be shamed by her ambassador. He looked at his face again in his little mirror. Young, but not too young—the mouth responsible—a few fine lines of thought on the brow and around the eyes—he might pass for a well-preserved forty, if he kept his expression at a point of decent gravity.

As his habit was, he took a short turn in the street before breakfast. It was a wonderful morning, the wind set in the north-west, the sky clear but for a few streamers, and the bay delicately crisped like a frozen pool. The good-wives in the west end of the Mid Street were washing their doorsteps or fetching water from the well, and as they wrought they shouted to each other the morning's news. There were no red gowns about, for it was vacation time, but far down the street he saw a figure which he knew for the Professor of Humanity, returning from his pre-breakfast walk on the links. His colleague was a sick man who lived by a strict regime, and Mr Lammas thanked Heaven that he had a sound body. Never had he felt more vigorous, more master of himself, he thought, as he drew the sweet air into his lungs. He was exhilarated, and would have liked to sing, but he repressed the feeling and looked at the sky with the brooding brow of one interrupted in weighty thoughts. "Dunbarton's Drums" was a hundred years away. The housewives gave him good morning, and he ceremonially returned their salutes. He knew that they knew that he was bound for London—not in the ramshackle diligence that lumbered its way daily westward, but riding post, as became a man on an urgent errand. In half an hour the horses from Morrison's stables would be at the door, for at Kirkcaldy he must catch the tide and the Leith packet.

As he re-entered his house his mouth had shaped itself for whistling, which he only just checked in time. "The Auld Man's Mare's Deid" was the inappropriate tune which had almost escaped his lips. He bent his brows, and straightened his face, and became the dignitary. A faint smell of burning came to his nostrils.

"Babbie," he thundered, "you are letting the porridge burn again. Have I not told you a hundred times that I cannot abide burnt porridge?"

The scarlet face of Mrs McKelvie appeared from the little kitchen. "'Deed sir, I'm sore flustered this morning. The lassie was late wi' the baps, and the fire wadna kindle, and I dauredna dish the parritch wi' you stravaigin' outbye. We maun haste, or Cupar Tam will be round wi' the horses afore ye have drucken your tea… . Eh, sirs, but ye're a sight for sair een, Mr Lammas. I've never seen ye sae trig and weel set up. Tak my advice and keep out o' the lassies' gait, for they tell me there's daft queans about England."

An hour later Mr Lammas had left the coast behind him and was in a landward country of plough and pasture. Cupar Tam on the horse which carried his mails rode discreetly some yards behind, and he was left free to think his own thoughts. He might even have whistled without scandal, but at first his mind was far from whistling.

Now that he was on the road, with every minute taking him farther from home, he was a little weighted by the importance of his mission. He, the youngest in the Senatus, had been chosen to fight this battle far away among subtle lawyers and cold men of affairs. London, which at other times he had dreamed of as an Hesperides of art and pleasure, now seemed like Bunyan's Vanity Fair, a hard place for a simple pilgrim. Also there was the meeting that very night in Edinburgh with Lord Mannour, a formidable figure as he remembered him, bushy-browed, gimlet-eyed, with none of the joviality of his son. He shook himself with difficulty out of a mood of diffidence. The harder the task, he reminded himself, the greater the credit. He forced himself to be worldly-wise. He was a man of affairs, and must view the world with a dignified condescension. "An old head upon young shoulders" had been the Principal's words. So he fell to repeating the arguments he meant to adduce about the Priory lands—"We are a little home of the humanities, my lords—Rome in her great days was always kindly considerate of Athens." …

But the motion of his horse sent the blood running briskly in his veins, the sun flushed his cheeks, and Mr Lammas became conscious again of the spring. The rooks were wheeling over the plough-lands, and the peesweeps and snipe were calling in every meadow. The hawthorn bushes were a young green, every hedge-root had its celandines and primroses, and there were thickets of sloe, white as if with linen laid out to bleach. The twin Lomonds poked their blue fingers into the western sky, and over them drifted little clouds like ships in sail. A great wall of stone bounded the road for a mile or two, and he knew the place for the park of Mount Moredun, of which Jock Kinloch had babbled the night before. Far up on the slopes that rose north from the Eden valley he saw too the dapper new woodlands which surrounded Balbarnit, the house of Miss Christian Evandale, that much-sought lady.

The sight switched his thoughts to a new channel—the difficulties of youth, the eternal and lovable foppery of the world. He thought of the slim boy who had once been his pupil and the callow yearnings of which he had once been the confidant; now the boy was a grown man in a glittering world, of which a Scots professor knew nothing. He thought of Jock Kinloch eating out his heart for a girl who was destined for his betters. And at the recollection he was filled with a humorous tenderness, for was he not himself a preceptor of youth, with a duty to trim its vagaries and therefore to understand them?

The world around him was young—young lambs in the fields, young leaves on the trees, mating birds everywhere, whispering grasses and frolic winds. When he ate bread and cheese at midday in a village alehouse his head was brimming with fancies. The vale through which he was riding seemed to him to have a classic grace, with the austere little hills rimming the horizon and a sky as blue as ever overhung a Sabine farm. He wished that he was Professor of Humanity, which had been his old ambition. He could have discoursed more happily on Horace and Virgil than on Barbara Celarent and the barren logomachies of Mr Reid… . He took to repeating to himself what he held to be the best of his own verses, and when the ground began to fall away towards the west and he came in sight again of the sea, he was back in the mood of the night before, and impenitently youthful.

It was the sea that did it, and the sudden waft of salt from the gleaming firth. Below him, tucked into a nook of the coast, lay Dysart, his childhood's home—he could see the steeple of its kirk pricking above a jumble of russet tiles, and the tall trees that surrounded the policies of its great new house, where once he had bird-nested. A schooner was tacking out with every sail set to catch the breeze—in the Norway trade, he judged from its lines. The air was diamond-clear, and on the Lothian shore he could make out the little towns, the thornbush which was the cluster of masts in Leith harbour, the Edinburgh spires on which the sun was shining, the lift of the Castle rock, and behind all the blue backbone of the Pentlands. He had a sudden vision of the world as an immense place full of blowing winds and a most joyous bustle. Classrooms and council chambers were well enough in their way, but here around him was the raw matter, the essential stuff of life, without which schools and statesmen would be idle.

The looms were clacking in every cot-house as he rode through the weaving village of Gallatown; hammers were busy among the nailmakers of Pathhead; the smell of a tan-pit came to his nostrils with a pleasing pungency; when he descended the long slope of the Path the sight of scaly fisherfolk and tarry sailormen gave him an inconsequent delight. As he saw the horses baited, and paid off Cupar Tam, and trod the cobbles of the harbour-walk he felt inexplicably happy. He stepped aboard the grimy Leith packet with the gusto of an adventurer.

The little ship had to tack far down the firth to get the right slant of wind, and Mr Lammas stood in its bows, amid piles of fresh-caught haddocks and much tarry lumber, in a happy dream. "Nanty," Jock Kinloch had called him the night before, from which it appeared that the St Andrews students knew him familiarly among themselves by his boy's name. Well, "Nanty" let it be. In a sense it was a compliment, for he could not imagine any of his starched colleagues being thus made free of the sodality of youth. He felt more like Nanty than Anthony, and the title of Professor seemed absurd. A recollection of his errand clouded him for an instant, but it was summarily dismissed. Time enough for those grave things later; let him indulge the flying minute. "It's not often I get such a lift of the heart," he told himself. This was the mood in which poetry was written; the thought of his literary ambitions gave a comforting air of prudence to his abandonment; there was an air jigging in his head to which fine verses might be set. Everything was making music—the light wind in the rigging, the rhythmical surge and heave of the vessel through the shining waters; and presently the blind fiddler squatted under the mast struck up, and the tune he played was "Dunbarton's Drums."

A figure, looking like a fisherman in his Sabbath best, sidled up to him. He did not know the face, but the man made a familiar sign—two plucks at an unshaven chin followed by a left forefinger drawn thrice along the brows. Mr Lammas responded with the pass-word, and a huge hand was extended, in the hollow of which lay a strip of dirty paper. "I've gotten this for your honour from ye ken who," said the man, and took himself off. "Mum's the word to my father, J. K.," were the words that Mr Lammas read, before he crumpled the scrap and dropped it overboard.

Silly fellow to be at such pains, as if he were likely to confess a son's infatuation to a father with whom he had weighty business! But the message seemed to sharpen his exhilaration. It had come twenty miles that day up the coast with miraculous expedition, and a certainty beyond his Majesty's mails. The Free Fishers were a potent folk, and he was one of them… . A queer sensation stole into Mr Lammas's mind, expectancy, wonder, a little fear. He was bound on a prosaic mission of which the bounds were strictly defined, but might not Providence, once he was on the road, take a hand in ravelling his purpose? He remembered something of a poem of Burns, which he had once turned into Latin longs and shorts:

 

"The best-laid schemes of mice and men

Gang aft agley."

 

He had had this sense of adventure upon him ever since he smelt the salt from the Pathhead braes. He had cherished it a little guiltily, as a lawful holiday mood, but might it not be a preparation for something momentous? Mr Lammas stepped ashore on the pier of Leith with a not unpleasant solemnity upon his spirit.

A hackney carriage took him to his inn behind the Register House, for he had no time to lose if he would keep his appointment with Lord Mannour. There he spruced himself up, and set out briskly on foot for his lordship's residence in Queen Street. The butler who admitted him announced that his master was for the moment engaged with his confidential clerk, but that the Professor was expected. Mr Lammas was ushered into the withdrawing-room on the first floor, which, owing to the lack of females in the family—for her ladyship was dead these many years—was cheerless as a tomb. But the windows were bright with late sunshine, and from them he had a wonderful prospect. He looked down over Lord Moray's meadows to the wooded glen of the Water of Leith, and beyond, across fields of ancient pasture, to a gleaming strip of firth. He saw the Fife shore smoking with its evening hearth-fires, the soft twin breasts of the Lomonds, and, to the left, at an infinite distance, the blue confusion of the Highland hills dappled with late snow. Ye gods, what a world of marvels! It was with an effort that he composed his countenance to gravity when he heard the street-door shut on the confidential clerk and his lordship's step on the stair.

Lord Mannour was but two years on the Bench. As Peter Kinloch he had been a noted verdict-getter, the terror of judges, whom he treated with small respect, and the joy of anxious clients. Mr Lammas had first met him when he was counsel for the University in an intricate matter of heritable property, and had respected the clean edge of his mind and the rough vigour of his tongue. At that time he had cultivated the manners of a country laird, his deep pockets looked as if they might hold twine and pruning-knives and samples of grain, and he did not condescend to trim his Fife speech to the gentility of some of his colleagues. The Bench had made his appearance more decorous, for there was no fault to be found with his full-cut black coat and well-shaped trousers, and the white neckcloth which was voluminous in an elder fashion. But he had the heavy bent shoulders of a countryman who was much on horseback, and the ruddy cheeks of a man who was much in the east wind. Sixty years of age—seeming more, for his once raven locks were prematurely white, and his thick brows hung like the eaves of a snowdrift. The contrast of the venerable hair with a face the hue of a vintage port, in which were set two brilliant dark eyes, gave him an air of masterful vitality. His repute as a lawyer was high, but higher still as a man of affairs, for he was known to be Lord Snowdoun's chief adviser, and many believed him to be the real Minister for Scotland. In private he had a name for good talk, for he was a friend of Walter Scott, a light of the Friday Club, and, after Lord Newton, the best judge of claret in the New Town. A Tory of the old rock, there were no politics in his private life, for he was said to be happier pricking philosophic bubbles with John Playfair or Dugald Stewart, discussing the laws of taste with Francis Jeffrey, or arguing on antiquarian points with Thomas Thomson than in the company of the ponderous lairds and sleek Writers to the Signet who shared his own faith.

He greeted Mr Lammas with a gusty friendliness. A servant was at his heels as if waiting for orders.

"You have left your mails at Ramage's, Professor? Away down with you, John, and have them moved to the Tappit Hen, which will be more convenient for the coach. It leaves precisely at ten o'clock, which does not allow you and me any too much time."

"I had bespoken a seat in to-morrow's Quicksilver," Mr Lammas began, but a wave of his lordship's hand cut him short.

"I know, I know, but I have taken the liberty to dispose otherwise. You'll agree, when you have heard what I have to tell. You'll travel by his Majesty's Mail, the Fly-by-Night, and not cramp your legs and get your death of cold in Gibbie Robison's auld daily hearse. Away, John, and see that all is in order. Meantime we'll get to our meat. The owercome says that it's ill speaking between a full man and a fasting, but two fasting men are worse at a crack, and you and I have much to say to each other. Follow me, for dinner is on the table, and the cockie-leekie will be cooling. My cook is a famous hand at it."

Mr Lammas descended to a gloomy apartment looking out on a strip of bleaching-green. The curtains were undrawn, though candles had been lit on the table and an oil-lamp on the sideboard. The walls were in shadow except the one opposite the window, where hung a picture of a fair-haired girl, one of Mr Raeburn's happiest efforts, which Mr Lammas took to be the long-dead Mrs Kinloch. A small coal-fire burned in the grate, at which three uncorked bottles of claret were warming. The host sat himself in a chair with his back to the window, and the guest took the place adjacent to the fire.

His lordship said grace.

"A glass of sherry with the soup? It prepares the way for its nobler brother, Professor, even as Saul preceded the Psalmist. I hope you are a claret-drinker, which every true Scot should be. Once it was the beverage of our people—my father minded well when it was cried through the town of Stirling at six shillings Scots the chopin. Now, alack! there are gentlemen's boards where you never see it. Too many of this degenerate age confine themselves to port, like the French Navy when Lord Nelson was on the seas… . You took ship from Kirkcaldy? What like were the lambs as you came through the East Neuk? You would pass within two miles of the Kinloch gates. It is my grief that the sitting of the courts prevents me being with my herds at this season of the herds' harvest, for you must know, Professor, that I'm like Cato the Censor, agricolarum voluptatibus incredibiliter delector. I would sooner fill my mouth with hoggs and wedders than with sasines and cautioners.

"And how's my hopeful son?" he went on, when Mr Lammas had exhausted his scanty agricultural knowledge. "You don't wheep at college? Pity that, for Jock, though he is eighteen years of age—no, he is past nineteen—would be often the better of a well-warmed backside."

"He is a young man for whom I profess an extreme partiality. His talents are considerable, his heart is warm, and he deports himself—"

"Ay, his deportment?"

"As decorously as can be expected from young blood."

"I am glad to hear you say so." His lordship cocked a sceptical eyebrow. "I wish the partiality you speak of may not blind you to Jock's failings. The lad's like a jack-o'-lanthorn. He's all I possess, and I would have him follow me and wear an advocate's gown, like four generations of Kinlochs. He'll aye have the kitchen-midden in Fife to fall back on if he finds the Parliament House thrawn. But his head is a wasp's byke for maggots. Now he would be a soldier, now he's for off abroad to see the world, and again he would be a fine gentleman and cock his beaver among his betters. There's still more yeast than wheaten flour in yon loaf… . But I did not bring you here to speak of son John. Till Dickson draws the cloth I have a word to say to you on the St Andrews business that takes you south. I have prepared a small memorial to guide you, and I have sent a scart of the pen to Lord Snowdoun to advise him of my views."

For the rest of the meal Mr Lammas listened to a cogent summary of the points in the University's case for presentation to the authorities of the Exchequer. Then the butler removed the table-cloth, placed two massive decanters, one of claret and one of brown sherry, a dish of nuts and a platter of biscuits on the shining mahogany, put coals on the fire, drew the curtains, lit two more candles on the mantelpiece, and left the room. Lord Mannour turned his chair towards the hearth.

"Now we'll get to the real business of this sederunt," he said. "What I brought you here for is no University concern. It's something a deal more important than that. It's nothing less than the credit of a noble family and the future of an unhappy youth. Have you folk in St Andrews heard of a certain young lady who bides not a hundred miles from you—Miss Christian Evandale, of Balbarnit?"

"I saw her park wall this very morning. Yes, I have heard of her, though I have not seen her."

"She is a year younger than my Jock, and the two were bairns together. Old Balbarnit left me her sole trustee, and it's no light charge to have in trust youth and siller. For I would have you know that Miss Christian is the best dowered lass in the kingdom of Fife."

"She has beauty also, I gather. Your son has talked to me of her beauty."

"The devil he has!" His lordship gathered his brows. "I've had a notion that Jock was airting that way. The idiot will only burn his fingers, for it is not to be permitted. I would be indeed a faithless curator if I abused my position by seeking an advantage for my son. In this matter I will be the Roman father. Kirsty will make the brawest match in Scotland, and one that consorts with her looks and her fortune. Indeed, it is already made in all but name, and the fortunate man is one whom you are acquainted with, Professor—the young Lord Belses, no less."

"What does the lady say?"

"The lady is a wise woman, and by no means disinclined to a high destiny. Why should she be averse to espouse rank and comeliness? I have seen the lad a dozen times and he's like Phoebus Apollo."

"Is he willing—my young lord?"

The brows unbent, and Lord Mannour's face was wrinkled in a wry smile.

"Acu rem tetigisti. In plain English, that's the devil of it. Dismiss Miss Kirsty from your mind, for I introduced her only that you should be fully seized of the whole matter. I have had a deal to do with my Lord Snowdoun over public affairs, for when he is invalided with the gout the Lord President takes over much of the conduct of Scots business, and I am his lordship's right hand. Likewise this affair of Kirsty brought me often, as her trustee, into consultation, for I may tell you the Snowdoun family ardently desires the match. Therefore I have heard much of Lord Belses, and had him much in my mind, and now his father has opened his heart to me. That's why I bade you here to-night. I would speak to you, not as Questor and Professor of St Andrews, but as Anthony Lammas, umquhile governor to Lord Belses and, it may be presumed, with some influence over him. For, let me tell you, your young friend is ploughing a dangerous rig."

Lord Mannour held his glass so that the firelight made it a glowing ruby. He cocked his eye at it, sipped the wine for a moment in silence, and then swung round to his companion.

"He's riding a rough ford, and if you and I cannot help him across, then by God he is down the burn and away with it… . Fill your glass, Professor, for it's with you that the heavy end of this job must rest. My Lord Snowdoun was here last week and we took counsel together, and the gist of our discussion was that the key to the perplexity was just yourself. It seems that the lad cherishes a liking for you, and a respect which unhappily he does not feel for his natural parent. We concluded that you were the only man alive that might correct his waywardness."

"It's more than three years since I saw him, and his letters lately have been few."

"Nevertheless, you are much in his mind. He quotes you—quotes you to the confusion of his mentors. Your tongue must whiles have wagged unwisely when you had the lad in charge."

Mr Lammas blushed. "I was younger then, and I may have spoken sometimes with the thoughtlessness of youth… . But I beg you, my lord, to put me out of suspense. What ill has befallen my dear Harry?"

"Your dear Harry has been playing the muckle gowk. That's the plain Scots of it. I will read you the counts in the indictment. In fairness, let me say that from some foibles of youth he seems to be notably free. He does not gamble, which is so much the better for a family that has scarcely the means to support its rank and its deserts. He is temperate, and at no time is either ebrius, ebriolus or ebriosus, as old Gardenstone used to put it. Maybe it would have been better for all concerned if he had birled the bottle and rattled the dice like the rest. No, but he has taken up with more dangerous pastimes. His father was ill advised enough to let him travel abroad after Oxford, without a douce companion such as yourself. There's just the one capacity in which a man should cross the Channel in these days, and that's as an officer of Lord Wellington's. Well, it seems that in foreign parts he picked up some Jacobin nonsense, and now that he is back he has been airing his daft-like politics to the scandal of honest folk."

"I am amazed," Mr Lammas cried. "Harry had a most sober and judicious mind."

"Well, he has lost it, and I think I can put my finger on the reason why. I care not a bodle if a young gentleman flings his heels and is a wee bit wild in his conversation. He is only blowing off the vapours of youth, and will soon settle down to be a 'sponsible citizen. But in this case there is more behind it. Lord Belses has found an aider and abetter. He is tied to the petticoat tails of a daft wife."

"A wife! He is married then? … "

"No, no. There's no marriage. I used our vernacular term for the other sex when we would speak of it without respect. Wife, but not his. She may be a widow, for I cannot just recollect if her husband is still alive. His name is Cranmer, and he is—or was—an ill-conditioned Northumberland squire. Hungrygrain is his estate, in Yonderdale, on the backside of Cheviot. She is young, and by all accounts she is not ill-favoured, and she has bound the poor boy to her with hoops of iron."

"Is she his mistress?"

"God knows! I jalouse not, for it seems that she is an enthusiast in religion as she is a Jacobin in politics. There's no more dangerous creature on earth than a childless woman who takes up with matters too high for her. There's some modicum of sense left in the daftest man, but there's none in a daft hussy. It seems that poor Harry is fair besotted—will hear no word of ill about her—follows her like a shadow—sits at her feet to imbibe the worst heresies anent Church and State—an anxiety to his family and a disgrace to his rank. What do you think of your umquhile pupil, Professor?"

"I think—I do not know what to think—I am deeply distressed."

"And that is not the worst of it, and here I come to the gravamen of the business. The woman not unnaturally bears an ill name among decent folk. Things are said of her, gossip flies, evil is spoken which is maybe not always well-founded. The young bloods make free with her repute, for her drunken husband, if he is still in life, is no kind of a protector. So what does our brave Harry do? Out he comes as her champion. Whoever says one word against Mrs Cranmer, or even cocks a critical eyebrow, will have to settle with him. That is his proclamation to the world. There is one young fellow—not so young, for they tell me he is a man of thirty—who is especially free with his tongue. It comes to my lord Harry's ear, who in a public place asks him to repeat it, and, when he is obliged, gives him the lie direct and gets a cartel for his pain. The man—I have his name—one Sir Turnour Wyse—is furious, and promises, as my father used to say, to knock the powder out of his lordship's wig. With that the fat is fairly in the fire. It seems that this Wyse is a truculent fellow, so there is no chance of a settlement. Further, he is a noted pistol-shot, and has already accounted for three men in the cool of the morning."

"They have not fought?" Mr Lammas quavered.

"Not yet, for steps have been taken to prevent their meeting. Lord Belses has been impounded by his family and is under lock and key. Sir Turnour Wyse has posted him as a coward and is ranging the earth in quest of him. The belief is that Harry has come to Scotland, and the mad baronet is after him like a whippet after a hare. But, let me tell it in your ear, the lad is cannily in London under duress, and there he must remain till he is brought to a better mind. If he meets this Wyse he has not one chance in a thousand, and a young life must not be sacrificed to folly. So to London you must go, and this very night, for any hour may bring a tragedy."

"But what am I to do?"

"Reason with him. Free him from the toils of that accursed baggage. No doubt the trouble with Wyse can be settled without disgrace if the lad will only show a little sense. You are the last hope of his worthy father—and of me that has Kirsty's interests in charge. The credit of a great house is at stake, and, what is more important for you, the future of one you love."

"But if he will not be guided by me?"

"Then you must try other ways. You must conspire with Lord Snowdoun to achieve by force what cannot be won by argument. You must be the bait to entice the lad somewhere where he will be out of mischief. Have no fear, Professor. This is your supreme duty, and Lord Snowdoun and I will set it right with your Senatus, even though St Andrews should not see you for many a day. Whatever money you need will be at your disposal. I have written down here the address in London to which you will go, and where Lord Snowdoun will give you full instructions. I place much on your wise tongue and the old kindness between the two of you. If these fail, there is the other way I have hinted at. There's plenty of wild country for hidyholes between the Channel and the Pentland Firth. St Kilda has not had a tenant since Lord Grange spirited away his thrawn auld wife."

Lord Mannour had talked himself into confidence and good temper.

"You'll be thinking it strange that I, a Senator of the College of Justice, should counsel violent doing to a minister of the Kirk. If that's in your mind, let me tell you that both in law and in religion there is a debatable land not subject to the common rules. I ask you to do nothing which can conceivably be against your conscience. For myself, as a student of the law of Rome, I am strong for the patria potestas, and that Jock knows to his cost."

"What is in my mind," said Mr Lammas, whose countenance was troubled, "is that I am not the man for such a task. How can I, a humble scholar and provincial, hope to influence a dweller in the great world? I am not even familiar with its language."

"Maybe, no. But when you get down to the bit, those discrepancies will count for little. Supposing it's a cadger's beast against a racehorse. As my father used to say, though one goes farther on the road in five minutes than the other does in an hour, they will commonly stable together at night. It's the end of the journey that matters."

Mr Lammas passed a hand over his eyes.

"I am deeply distressed—and sore perplexed. My affection for Harry obliges me to do all that is in my power for his succour, but I am lamentably conscious that that all is but little."

"Tut, man! Why make such a poor mouth about it? You are over-modest. I tell you that I have for some time had my eye upon you, and Lord Snowdoun has had his eye upon you, and we are both convinced of your competence. Maybe you lack something, but you are the best available. You have years enough and learning enough to ballast you, and you are young enough to talk to youth in its own tongue. My ne'er-do-well Jock, if he were here, would no doubt bear me out on this latter point, for you are the one man he speaks of with decent respect… . Here's Grierson with the toddy-bowl. We'll drink a rummer to your success, and then you must take the road."

The butler set on the mahogany a mighty tray with the materials for punch—a china bowl, a pot-bellied flagon of whisky with a silver stopper, two tall glasses, a kettle of hot water, a bag of lemons and a dish of broken sugar-loaf. There was also a letter, which Lord Mannour, thinking it some ordinary missive on legal business, at first disregarded. He brewed the toddy to his taste, filled the two glasses, and handed one to his guest.

"Here's to you," he said. "The toast is success to honesty and confusion to folly."

But he set down his rummer untasted, for his eye had caught the superscription on the letter. With an exclamation he tore it open, and as he read it his black brows came together.

"God ha' mercy!" he cried. "This is from Lord Snowdoun—by special messenger—the man must have flown, for it's dated only two days back. Harry has broken bounds and disappeared, and they have no notion of his whereabouts… . Here's a bonny tangle to redd up!"

"Do my instructions still hold?" Mr Lammas asked timidly, for his lordship's formidable face was very dark.

"More than ever," was the fierce answer. "But there's this differ, that you must find the lad first before you can reason with him. There's just the one duty before you, to get on to his scent like a hound with a tod… . Finish your glass, and be off with you. My man's waiting to lead you to the coach. Whatever wit and wisdom there is in your head you must bend to this grievous task. The day after the morn you'll be with Lord Snowdoun, and after that may God prosper you!"

Mr Lammas rose, but not heavily or dispiritedly. This last piece of news had mysteriously altered his outlook. Youth had risen in him as it had risen the night before under the April sky. He felt himself called, not to a duty, but to an adventure.

Chapter 3 Tells of a Night Journey

The mood carried him with long strides to the hostelry of the Tappit Hen, Lord Mannour's man John being forced to trot at his side. The moon had scarcely risen, but the narrow street was bright with stable lanterns and the great head-lights and tail-lights of a coach. The Fly-by-Night, carrying his Majesty's mails, seemed to Mr Lammas's country eye but a frail vessel in which to embark on a long journey. Its crimson undercarriage and the panels which bore the royal arms glowed like jewels in the lantern light, for the polish was like that of a Dutch cabinet. The horses were being put to it, with a great clatter of hooves on the cobbles, but with none of the babble of stable-boys which attended the setting out of the St Andrews diligence. This was a high ceremonial, performed with speed and silence.

Not more than three outside passengers were permitted on a royal mail, and Mr Lammas, having seen his baggage stowed in the boot, climbed to the box seat. Thence he looked down upon a scene which filled him with romantic expectation. The coachman, who was in royal livery—so he must have had long service behind him—and had the best brushed boots and the best tied cravat that Mr Lammas had ever seen, was a little rosy man with a hat nicely cocked on one side of a great head. He drank a glass of some cordial which a maid from the inn presented to him on a silver salver, chucked the girl under the chin, and then walked to the horses' heads, inspecting critically the curb chains and the coupling reins, and taking particular note that the tongues of the billet-buckles were secure in their holes. A second passenger arrived for the outside, also a little man, in a top-coat which enveloped his ears, and sat himself on one of the two roof seats. Then appeared the inside party, two ladies so shawled and scarfed that nothing could be seen of their faces, and with them what seemed to be their servant, who joined Mr Lammas on the outside.

The coachman claimed to his box with the reins looped over one arm, settled himself comfortably, caught the thong of his whip three times round the stick, and cried a word to the ostlers. These stood back from the leaders, and the beautiful creatures, young beasts nearly thoroughbred, flung up their heads as they were given the office and plunged forward up to their bits, till the weight of the heavier wheelers steadied them and brought them back to their harness. The little crowd cheered, the guard played "Oh, dear, what can the matter be?" on a key bugle, and, almost before Mr Lammas was aware, the cobbles of Edinburgh and its last faubourgs were behind him, and he was being carried briskly along the new south road.

The coachman attended strictly to his business till they were some miles from the city and moving between fresh-ploughed fields and a firth now silvered by moonlight. He then screwed his head and had a look at the two others behind. The prospect did not seem to please him. "Japanned! The whole dam lot of 'em!" he murmured. "And me that looked for the Baronet! Devilish poor lot to kick." After that he sunk his head into his cravat, and his further conversation was addressed to his leaders.

"He means," said a voice from behind, "that we're all ministers of the Kirk, and are not likely to fee him well."

Mr Lammas turned and observed his two companions. The one who had spoken was so small that his travelling coat made him look like a mole emerging from its burrow. The moon showed his face clearly—one of those faces in which an unnaturally square chin and unnaturally tight lips lose their effect from prominent goggle eyes. The other was a taller fellow with a lugubrious countenance and a thick white comforter round his throat. Since all three of them wore dark travelling coats the coachman's assumption was not unreasonable.

"Are you a minister, sir, if I may make bold to speir?" asked the man who had first spoken. He had a rich consequential voice, which put a spice of dignity into his inquisitiveness.

"I am a minister, but I have no charge." Mr Lammas was in too friendly a mood to the world to resent questions.

"Stickit?"

"No, placed, but not in any parish. I am a professor."

"Keep us! On the divinity side?"

"No. My chair is philosophy. My name is Lammas."

The other repeated it with respect. "Lammas! And a philosopher! Had you been a theologian I would have kenned the name. Well, sir, since we're to be company for the livelong night we may as well be friends. My name is Dott, Duncan Dott, and I'm the town-clerk of the ancient and royal burgh of Waucht."

"A most honourable office," said Mr Lammas cordially.

"You may say so. Honourable but laborious. If I were to tell you the battles I've had to fight on behalf of the common good—the burgh lands and the pontage over the Waucht water—the wrestling with oppressive lairds—the constant strife over cess and fess and market dues and the minister's treinds—gudesakes, Professor, you'd be content with your own canny lot. But it's not on burgh business that I'm now on the road, for I'm likewise a writer and have the factoring of two or three kittle estates."

He checked himself, as if he felt that discretion demanded no further revelations. But his curiosity was still active.

"I wonder who the two inside passengers may be—the two women rowed up like bolsters… . And can we have the favour of your name, friend?" he asked, turning to the third man.

The answer came in a melancholy voice out of the folds of the woollen muffler.

"Ye're welcome. My name is Pitten—Ebenezer Pitten—at least that is what I gang by. Properly it should be Pittendreich, like my father afore me and a' my kin Dunfermline way. But Miss Georgie will not hae it. 'Ye're a dreich enough body,' she says, 'without stickin' dreich at the end of your name. Forbye,' she says, 'it's ower long to cry about the house.' So Pitten I've been thae ten years, and I've near forgotten ony other… . Ye speir wha the two leddies are? Weel, I can tell ye, for I'm nae less than their butler. The younger—but ye'd not ken the difference, for, as ye justly observe, they are both rowed up like bolsters—the younger is my mistress, Miss Christian Evandale, of Balbarnit, well kenned for the bonniest and best-tochered young leddy in the kingdom of Fife. And the other is just her auntie that bides with her, Miss Georgina Kinethmont, her that insists on calling me out o' my baptism name."

"I've heard tell of Miss Evandale," said Mr Dott respectfully. "The clash is that all the lads in Fife and Angus and the feck of the Lothians are after her. She's bonny, you say?"

"Abundantly weel-favoured."

"And rich?"

"Fourteen thousand acres of guid farming land, and feus in a dozen burgh-towns, forbye a wecht o' siller in the bank."

"And an ancient family, no doubt?"

"No her. That is to say, no on her father's side, though her mother's folk the Kinethmonts are weel enough come. Her father was the son of auld Nicholas Ebbendaal, the Hollander that owned a' the Dundee whalers. He left his son awesome riches, and naething would serve that son but that he maun tak the siller out of ships and put it intil land, and set up as a laird. Ebbendaal wasna considered gentrice enough, so he changed it to Evandale, when he bought Balbarnit from the drucken lad that was the last o' the auld Metlands. 'Deed ye can see the Hollander in Miss Kirsty for a' her denty ways. I wadna put it by her to be a wee thing broad in the beam when she grows aulder, like a Rotterdam brig."

"You've an ill-scraped tongue," said Mr Dott.

"No me. I'm an auld and tried servant o' the family, and I ken my place, but among friends I can open my mind. I've said naething against Miss Kirsty. She's mindfu' and mensefu' and as bonny as a simmer day."

"What like's her auntie, Miss what-d'ye-call her?"

Mr Pitten's voice sank, and he looked nervously round him. "Speak not evil of dignitaries," he answered, "lest the birds of the air carry it. But them inside will no hear me with the rummle o' this coach. Miss Georgie"—his voice sank lower—"is a braw manager and a grand heid for business, but she is like the upper and the nether millstone. She's a great woman, but an awfu' one, and she has a tongue in her heid that would deafen the solans. The best place for her would be wi' the sodgers, for I wager she'd fricht Bonyparte if she ever won near him."

They were rolling along a flat road close to the shore, and the easy motion predisposed Mr Lammas's companions to sleep. The first change of horses was accomplished with the precision of a military movement and in not more than sixty seconds. "Behold," said Mr Lammas to himself, "how use creates skill, and skill habit." After that Mr Dott seemed to sink inside his great-coat, like a mole going back to earth, and his steady breathing, accompanied by an occasional gurgle, soon proclaimed that he was asleep. The Balbarnit butler presently followed suit, snoring portentously, with his mouth open and his head wagging over the coach's side. The noise caught the coachman's ear, and, when he observed that Mr Lammas was alone wakeful, he showed himself inclined to conversation.

"Let 'em snore," he said. "They'll be shook up and wakened right enough on Kitterston hill. Was I right? Are all three o' you japanned?"

"You were wrong. I am the only one in holy orders, and I am not a minister but a professor."

The other brooded over this information, and seemed to be puzzled.

"Professor," he said. "They 'ave 'em in Oxford, but you're not that breed. The only others I know of are the professors that cure corns and rheumatiz at the fairs. There was one at Mitcham, I mind, that had a crown piece off me and left me lamer nor a duck. That your line o' country?"

"No," said Mr Lammas. "I am a professor of philosophy."

The coachman grinned.

"I'll shake hands with you on that. A philosopher—that's what they calls me. 'George Tolley,' they says, 'you're a philosopher and no mistake. You always comes up smilin'. Never a grumble from you, George. And the philosophic way you handles your cattle is a fair treat to be'old.' So we're two of a trade, you and me, though we works different roads. How long have you been at it? Three years? It's thirty-seven years come Ladyday since I first took up the ribbons and started in on philosophy."

Mr Lammas asked if he had always driven the Royal Mail.

"Lord bless you, no. They don't let any amateur serve his Majesty. The Mail, as you might say, is the last stage for a philosopher. I began when I was a nipper as stable-boy at Badminton, with the old Dook. Then I was allowed to take a 'and with his Grace's private coach, and then for four years I drove the Beaufort back and forward from Gloucester to the Bull and Mouth. After that I come north, and took the York Express from Leeds to London. One hunner and ninety-six miles, and I have done it in sixteen hours. It's them north-country roads as larns you your job, for any ordinary tidy whip can push along the Brighton Age or the Bristol Triumph. It's nussin' horses that's the philosophy of coachin'—not, as young bloods think, the knack of flicking a fly off a leader's ear. Just you watch," said Mr Tolley. "That off leader there is a bit too fresh. What does I do with him?"

The horse in question was fretting and fidgeting, and suddenly broke into a canter which upset the balance of the team. Mr Tolley promptly pulled in the wheelers, with the result that the leaders also were held back and made to feel the collar.

"A young spark," he said, "would have tried to pull him up by the bit, and would ha' made him wuss by bringin' him back on the bar. I pulls him up by his harness, all as sweet as sugar. That's what I means by philosophy."

Mr Lammas was a willing pupil in this novel branch of his subject. He asked the inevitable question. There were many amateur drivers abroad, gentlemen who owned their own coaches, or for a hobby drove a stage. How did such compare with the regulars?

It was a subject on which Mr Tolley felt deeply, but, being a philosopher, he was a just man. With his whip hand he rubbed his smooth chin.

"That ain't easy to answer. The college boys that drives the Oxford and Cambridge stages are of no particular account, though some of 'em larns the job in time. And there's heaps o' gentlemen as can make a pretty show with four nicely matched tits past Hyde Park Corner that I wouldn't trust for ser'ous work. But there's no doubt that the gentleman when he sets his mind to it makes a fine whip, for he does for love what me and my likes does for hire, and love helps any game. Besides, he has eddication, and can think about things and find the reasons for 'em, while my philosophy is just what God Almighty has larned me by 'ard knocks. But Lord save us! some of 'em are terrible pernickety. They've mostly all got some fad, and I've 'ad gentlemen come lecturin' me about 'aving a short wheel rein, and fastening the buckles of my ribbons, and sich like. 'You may be right, my lord,' I says, very polite, but under my breath I says, 'Go and teach your grandma.'"

"The best?" Mr Tolley continued reflectively. "Well, there was a Scotch gentleman, Captain Barclay, that drove this very Mail all the four hundred miles from Edinbro' to London. But I don't reckon 'im a finished whip, more what they calls a 'Ercules. But there's three—four—yes, five gentlemen I allows to be my equal, and the equal of any professional coachman that ever drew on gloves. There's Sir John Fagg in Kent. In Oxfordshire there's Sir Henry Peyton with his greys, and Mr Harrison with his browns. There's Mr Warde as works from Warwickshire into Shropshire, and Mr John Walker down Sussex way. Them five I calls my equals, but there's one gentleman to whom I gives best every time. Whatever stakes he enters for George Tolley withdraws, for he knows his master. And that gent is Sir Turnour Wyse, Baronet, of Wood Rising 'All, in the county of Norfolk. Well I knows the name, for he sends my missus a brace of pheasants every Christmas."

Mr Lammas started.

"Sir Turnour Wyse! I did not know that he was a famous whip."

"Well, you know now. The famousest! A pink! An out-and-outer," cried Mr Tolley enthusiastically. "He sometimes travels with me, and then I keeps my ears open to pick up what I can. Not that he 'asn't his fads. Short wheel reins—that's the wust of 'em. I saw him this very day in Edinbro', and I was hopin' to have him sittin' to-night where you're sittin'. But if he's comin' south it'll likely be in his own chaise."

Mr Lammas's eyes were growing heavy, and this the coachman observed. "We'll dry up now," he said, "and you'd best have a nap. We're comin' into hilly ground, and will have to slacken down a bit. In three hours we'll be at Berwick, where you'll get a glass of summat, and at Newcastle you'll have your bellyful of breakfast."

So Mr Lammas dozed uneasily, and woke up to find the Mail halted at an inn for a change of horses. The little cold wind which precedes the dawn was blowing, and he drew the collar of his coat about his ears. A light fog, too, was rolling up from the sea, which blanketed the ground, but left the inn gables and a tall tree sticking out in a dim grey half-light. He found Mr Tolley in a bad temper.

"This cussed fog," he grumbled. "Wuss than black darkness, for the lights don't show. I wouldn't mind it if we 'ad decent narrow roads atween 'edges, but this stage is mostly in the open, and what's to hinder us from bumpin' into loose cattle. Likewise these new quads are not up to the mark, and I'll be shot if I don't report Mackutcheon for bad hosses. It ain't the first time he's done it. Them wheelers is too small and weak for Kitterston hill, and we can't slow down, for we're behind time already. And I'll be shot if that near leader 'asn't 'ad the megrims. I don't like the stiff neck of him, and the way he's snatchin' at his collar."

Sunrise was not far off, but the mist dimmed the first premonition of it from the east, and though the nostrils smelt dawn the eyes were still in night. The morning was windless, except for tiny salt airs that rose like exhalations from the abyss on the left which was the sea. The road had become a sort of switchback among shallow glens, and the befogged lamps showed that it was bounded by no paling or hedge or drystone dyke, but marched directly with bent and heather. Curlews were beginning to call like souls lost in the brume. They reminded Mr Lammas of spring days at Snowdoun under the Ochils and at Catlaw in Tweeddale; they also reminded him of his former pupil and his difficult errand, and so drove out the last dregs of sleep. He observed that his companions were also awake. Mr Dott's head had emerged like a turtle from his overcoat, and he was blinking and sniffing the raw air, while the Balbarnit butler, yawning extravagantly, was searching in some inner pocket for snuff.

The easy motion of the earlier hours had gone, and Mr Tolley seemed to have his hands full with his horses, and to be disinclined for conversation. As compared with the ordinary stage-coach the Mail was lightly laden; nevertheless, with five passengers and much baggage, it carried a full burden for its make. The horsing at the last halt had not been good—even Mr Lammas's unpractised eye could see that. The wheelers were small and light and moved badly together, and the off one, when he felt the weight behind pressing on him, was inclined to break into a canter. The near leader, a weedy bay with poor shoulders, seemed to be only half broken, for it kept its head jerked away from its partner, and was perpetually shouldering the pole. In these circumstances the driver's tactics were to force the pace, taking most of the short descents at a gallop and thereby acquiring momentum for the next hill. The speed was exhilarating, but it was also nerve-shaking, for the coach swayed ominously, and at one hill with a crook in it Mr Lammas was convinced that they were over.

Mr Dott was nervous.

"I don't like it," he muttered between his clenched teeth. "These are awesome hills if that fog would let us see them—I've travelled this road before—and it would have been wiser-like to have had a lock-wheel or a drag chain instead of taking each brae as if it was the finish of Musselburgh races. What the—!"

His words were jerked out of him like squeaks from a bladder. "Forgive me, but this will betray me into profane swearing. Hey, coachman—driver—are you determined to break all our necks?"

Mr Tolley disdained to answer, but after the fourth or fifth appeal he condescended to address Mr Lammas.

"Best way with this raw stuff is to sweat it, and in five minutes we'll have Kitterston hill behind us. Keep an easy mind, sir, for I've 'andled wuss cattle on wuss roads. We'd 'ave daylight if only this blasted fog would lift."

Presently they topped a rise, and after a hundred yards on the flat the road seemed to tilt forward into an immense trough of shadow. It did not take Mr Dott's fervent "It's Kitterston—God be kind to us" to tell Mr Lammas that they were descending no ordinary hill. Close to the top there was a patch of special steepness which brought the coach's weight down upon the wheelers and set them cantering. Mr Tolley whipped the canter into a gallop, and, swaying sickeningly at the corners, they rocketed down into the abyss. Mr Lammas felt an awful exhilaration, for never had he known movement so swift and so mysterious. He sat tight, clutching the handrail, his feet braced against the foot-board, while from his companions behind came little noises that may have been prayers. Mr Tolley knew his job, for even in what seemed a reckless gallop he steered a course. The surface of the road was hard hill gravel on which the wheels scarcely bit, but on the left side was a rut of softer ground, and by keeping the coach's near wheels there he made it act like a brake.

The fog thinned as they descended. Presently Mr Lammas realised that they were over the worst, for he felt the gradient lessen and saw the road sweep before them in a gentler slope. They must be nearing the bottom, and at the bottom there would be a stream, and either a ford or a bridge. Once they were past the water hazard they could breathe freely… . Then, as the vapour thinned he realised that it was actually daylight. The sun was showing through the cotton-wool layers, and the smell of the sea came with a pungent freshness. His spirits rose, his mouth shaped itself to whistling, and he was embarking on "Dunbarton's Drums," when he saw something which froze the music on his lips. For in the vanishing fog the road had cleared right to the valley bottom, and there, not ten yards off, was a flock of sheep, which had drifted down from the moor and were taking their ease on the King's highway.

Mr Tolley saw it too, for he rose in his seat and endeavoured to pull up his team. It was too late, for the galloping leaders were into the flock. They both fell, the main bar unhooked, and the wheelers were on the top of them. The coach lurched, slewed round as the wheelers swung sharp to the right, and then with a violent grating and creaking bowed forward into a shallow ditch. Mr Tolley did not lose his seat, and Mr Dott and the butler kept theirs by a desperate clutch on the rail, but Mr Lammas, who had got to his feet in readiness to jump clear, was catapulted by the shock into a bush of heather.

He picked himself up, shaken but with unbroken bones, and hurried back to the place of disaster. There he was the witness of a wild spectacle. The leaders were wallowing under the splinter-bar and Mr Tolley was struggling to disengage them, while the guard dealt with the half-frantic wheelers. Barring cut knees the horses seemed to have taken no harm, but the pole of the coach had snapped. Mr Dott, still on the roof, was investigating a brown leather satchel to see that his papers were safe, and the butler was descending with difficulty to resume his duties. For his two ladies had emerged from the coach's interior, and one, who was still masked and shawled like a highwayman, was filling the morning air with her complaints. The other, who had rid herself of her cloak, revealed a very pretty face under a green travelling hat. "Hold your tongue, Aunt Georgie," she was saying. "There is no harm done. You're screaming like a seagull over nothing."

Suddenly beside the wrecked Mail there drew up another vehicle, also coming from the north. It was a curious make of chaise, very broad, with a dicky behind it; it had a pole instead of the usual shafts, and it was drawn by two cobs who seemed to have come fast and far. In the dicky sat a servant in a dark livery, and the driver was a tall man, who wore a white beaver and one of the massive frieze coats called dreadnoughts. He was on the ground in a second, and strode to the struggling Mr Tolley at the coach's head. He seemed to know his work, for he unbuckled certain straps and helped to get the leaders on to their feet, quieting the near one with curious pattings and strokings. Then he cast an eye over the broken pole and the panting wheelers.

"You've made a pretty mess of it, George," he said. "I always warned you what would happen."

The driver raised a furious red face, but one glance at the speaker was enough to compose his features into respect. He touched the rim of his hat.

"'Twas bad hosses as done it, your honour," he grumbled. "Bad hosses and them bloody sheeps."

"Bad horses be hanged and bloody sheep be crucified," was the answer. "You hadn't control of your team or you could have pulled up in time. The fog has been lightening for twenty minutes—I watched it coming down the hill. It's the old story. If you had had short wheel reins and breechings to your harness, this need never have happened. How often have I told you that?"

Mr Tolley would no doubt have made answer, but the tall man gave him no chance. "Bustle along, George," he said, "for his Majesty's business can't wait. Let the guard—who is it?—Ribston?—take one of the wheelers and ride the four miles to Berwick, for the mails must be in time for the morning Highflyer. Take you the other wheeler and go hunt for a smith—that pole is smith's work—and put up the leaders at the inn here. They won't be fit for much for a week. Ribston will bring out fresh beasts, and you should be in Berwick by midday… . As for these gentlemen, my advice is that they look for breakfast and then take a chaise to Berwick. Ah, you have ladies?" he added, as he caught sight of the two figures who were striving with the shaken Mr Pitten. He advanced with hat in hand, and addressed the elder.

"Madam," he said, "I have the good fortune to be travelling the same road. Can I have the felicity of serving you? I can offer you two seats in my humble chariot, and my servant can assist yours in bringing on the baggage. I can promise you that in half an hour I will turn you over to the chambermaids at the Red Lion."

Miss Georgie seemed about to raise difficulties and Miss Kirsty to make polite protests, but he smilingly ignored them. This was a man of action, for in three minutes the elder woman was sitting at his side and the younger in the seat behind, he had taken the reins, lifted his whip, and the cobs were trotting Berwick-wards. His orders about the coach, too, were being exactly fulfilled. The leaders were limping to the inn stables in the charge of Mr Tolley, and the guard, laden with mail bags, had set forth on one of the wheelers. The other passengers, having secured their valises, were making shift to carry them to the inn, and the two servants were struggling with the ladies' baggage. As they reached the door, Mr Tolley was leaving on his quest for a smith, and he shook hands ruefully with Mr Lammas.

"That was an accident as no mortal man could prevent," he declared. "He's wrong—you take my word for it—clean wrong. It 'ad nothing to do with long wheel-reins or breechin' to the 'arness. It was bad hosses and bloody sheeps. For all his wisdom he 'as his megrims, just like that cussed near leader."

"Who was the gentleman?" Mr Lammas asked.

"Why, Sir Turnour Wyse, Baronet—him I was tellin' you about."

Chapter 4 In which a Young Lover is Slighted

With a preoccupied mind Mr Lammas entered the lobby of the little inn with its homely fragrance of new-kindled fires, oil-lamps and morning cooking, bowed to the smiling and flustered landlady, and heard Mr Dott order a generous breakfast. That commanding figure in the dreadnought had strongly impressed him, and he marvelled at the way in which fate was speeding up his experience. Ten hours ago he had heard from Lord Mannour the name of Sir Turnour Wyse as the main peril which threatened the young man whom it was his mission to save; Mr Tolley on the coach had spoken of him in worshipping accents; and now the man himself had appeared, a god from a machine, looking, like some Homeric hero, larger than human in the morning fog. Most clearly destiny was taking a hand in the game.

Horses could be provided, said the landlady. The gig had been already bespoken to carry the ladies' baggage and the servants, but the sociable was at the gentlemen's disposal and would be ready as soon as Rob Dickson had had his brose and had caught the young mare. Again Mr Lammas had a delicious sense of being drawn into a new world. The short walk to the inn had been like a bath in cold water, for the mist was furling into airy corridors which revealed at their end the bluest of skies, and a great salty freshness was coming up from the sea. The bustle of the inn and the demand for horses was like a sudden resurrection of his boyhood. Also he was furiously hungry, and Mr Dott's command for fresh haddocks, eggs, and a brandered collop to follow had amply interpreted his desires.

Out from the parlour came the sound of lusty singing.

 

"Katie Beardie had a coo,

A' black about the moo,—

Wasna yon a denty coo!—

Dance, Katie Beardie."

 

He recognised both the voice and the song. He opened the door to find Jock Kinloch taking his ease before the remnants of a mutton ham.

There was nothing of the St Andrews secondar about Jock's appearance. He wore a coarse, knitted woollen jersey, and much-stained nether garments, of which the ends were stuffed into heavy sea-boots. His head was more tousled than ever, and the weather had given his complexion the ripeness of his father's.

"God be kind to us!" he cried. "Nanty!" And then he stopped, for he saw that a stranger was present and changed his address to "Professor." "You're a sight for sore eyes, but I never looked to meet you here. I thought that at this moment you would be at Ramage's taking your seat in the Quicksilver."

"I left last night with the Mail, and half an hour back we had a breakdown at the hill foot. May I present to you Mr Duncan Dott, the town-clerk of the burgh of Waucht? This is Mr John Kinloch, Mr Dott. You are no doubt familiar with his father's name."

"Not Lord Mannour's son?" said Mr Dott, relaxing his tight jaws into a grin, and holding out a cordial hand. "Indeed I know of your father, young sir, and what is more, in the old days I have often fee'd him, for he was the burgh's favourite counsel in their bits of law business. Ay, and three months back he did us a great service. The burgh had a plea against Dalitho the tanner anent his stink-pots on Waucht Green. We lost before the Lord Ordinary—a most inequitable decision, but old Curlywee is long past his best, but the Upper House gave it in our favour, and your worthy father, sir, delivered a judgment which will long be remembered as the pure milk of the legal word. I'm honoured to meet his son… . You'll take another bite of breakfast with us, for it's a snell morning."

"I'll have a cup of tea with you when the wife brings it, but I must get back to the boat. You say the Mail has spilt itself? That would be the clatter of horses I heard at the stable door and took for the gaugers from Berwick."

"You haven't told me what brought you here," said Mr Lammas. "I got a request from you on the Burntisland packet, and I need not tell you that I obeyed it. But I thought you were at Kinloch."

Jock winked mysteriously.

"I'm on a bit of a jaunt," he said. "I came down the coast yesterday with some friends of mine—friends of yours too, Professor."

"Where are you bound?"

Again Jock winked.

"That's telling. Maybe just to see the world, and get the fine fresh air, and see the solans on the Bass."

"Who are your companions?"

"The best. Who but Bob Muschat, your old crony, and Eben Garnock himself."

Mr Lammas started. What took the Chief Fisher in such haste down the Berwick shore, for Eben Garnock was a great man who did not stir himself except for a good purpose. It could not be fishing business, for the herrings were gone north towards the Tay. And how came a new member of the brotherhood like Jock Kinloch to be taken thus early into the inner circle?

Jock's face had an unwonted gravity. "I would like a word with you, Professor, before you go. Maybe I can do something for you and you for me."

At that moment an untidy kitchen-maid brought in the breakfast and plumped it on the table, and the landlady followed more ceremoniously with the tea-urn and a great jug of creamy milk. The travellers fell greedily upon the food, but Jock contented himself with a cup of tea and a new-baked scone. Conversation ceased while the first pangs of hunger were being quieted.

But the peace was suddenly broken. A melancholy countenance poked itself round a half-opened door. "We're for off"—it said, addressing Mr Lammas. "Is there onything I can do for you in Berwick? We'll be there long or you."

Jock Kinloch sprang to his feet.

"Pitten!" he cried. "Where on earth have you sprung from?"

The head came a little farther into the room.

"I've been delivered by the mercy of God from the miry pit. Have ye not heard, Mr Kinloch? The Mail coupit—or came near to coupin'—at the foot o' Kitterston hill, and left the hale clanjamphry o' us on our flat feet. Nae blood spilt, the Lord be thankit, but such a stramash I never beheld."

"But you—What brought you here?"

"I was with my leddies—Miss Christian Evandale of Balbarnit, and her auntie, Miss Georgina Kinethmont. Well ye ken them, Mr Kinloch. We're off to London, and we have startit unco ill."

"The ladies! They took no hurt?"

"Not a bodle. They sat snug as mice in the inside o' the coach, though Miss Georgie was wantin' somebody hangit for the breakdown. Syne by comes a braw gentleman in a chaise, and he whups the twasome awa' wi' him to Berwick. They're at the Red Lion, and I'm followin' wi' their mails. I maun haste, or I'll get the ill-scrapit side o' Miss Georgie's tongue."

The head withdrew and Jock flung himself from the room in pursuit. Sounds of whispering and then of loud command were heard from the lobby. Jock returned with a fiery face and a stern purpose in his eye.

"I'm off, Nanty," he said, forgetting the presence of Mr Dott. "The wind's right and I'll get Eben to slip down in the boat, and I'll be there before Pitten in his old hearse of a gig. Kirsty in trouble and me not beside her—the thing's not thinkable! You're certain she wasn't hurt? Tell me, did you speak to her? Did you hear her plans?"

"Not I," said Mr Lammas. "She and her aunt were swathed like mummies in the inside, while I took the air on the box. All I saw of her was for three minutes this morning, and all I learned was that she had a pretty face."

"Never mind her looks. What like was the man who picked them up in his curricle?"

Mr Dott answered. "Well-favoured and well set-up and everything handsome about him. A young Corinthian, I doubt, for he seemed to know more about horseflesh than is becoming in a man who does not make his living by it."

Jock groaned.

"I'll be obliged, Nanty, if you lose no time in getting to Berwick. I may be glad of your company there. If they and that fellow are at the Red Lion, you had better go to the other shop—the King's Arms—about the middle of Hide Hill as you go down to the Sand Gate. Whether they take the Highflyer or a post-chaise, I must catch them before they leave. Meet me there in an hour's time."

Mr Dott looked after the departing figure with a reflective smile.

"A stirring lad," he decided, "with much of his father's spunk. Love, I suppose. Calf-love."

"They were children together."

"All the more dangerous, and the more hopeless. The affection of bairns is a poor foundation for a wooing, for the light female mind wants something new. I would not give a groat for Mr Jock's chances, for they tell me that Miss Kirsty is like the lassie in the song—wooers pulling at her from every airt. We'd better stir our shanks, Professor, for, besides our proper business, I would like you to keep tryst with that young man."

Rob Dickson had eaten his brose and caught the mare, and the two embarked in an ancient vehicle which must have carried goods as well as passengers, for it was floury with pease-meal and smelt strongly of wool and tar. It was a cumbrous concern, and Rob was a poor charioteer; also the young mare, just off the grass, was both sluggish and capricious. She bored into the left side of the road, took the hills at a dragging walk, and shied furiously at every stirk that put its head over the adjacent dykes. So their progress was erratic and slow, and both grew impatient.

"This donnered animal will have you late for your tryst," said Mr Dott.

"It will make me miss the Highflyer," said Mr Lammas, "and that I cannot afford to do."

"We're in too great a hurry nowadays," said Mr Dott. "It's an awful thing the speed of this modern world. When my father took the road it was on the outside of a beast, not in a varnished contrivance on wheels, and little it mattered to him, honest man, whether he was an hour late or a day late. But nowadays we must scour the country as if the devil were behind us, and if there's a crack in our perjink plans the whole edifice goes blaff. Bethankit that I go no farther than Berwick, so I'm near my goal."

Mr Lammas, watching bitterly the stagnant rump of the young mare, asked if Mr Dott's business would be concluded there.

"Not precisely, but Berwick will be my headquarters. I have a journey to make into the adjacent hills. A queer bit, Professor. Heard you ever such a name as Hungrygrain in Yonderdale?"

Mr Lammas was stirred to attention. Where had he met these uncouth syllables? He searched his memory and recollected. Last night Lord Mannour had named the place as the home of the Delilah who had enchanted Lord Belses. Here was one who could give him valuable news.

"Strangely enough I have heard the name before. Isn't it the property of a Mrs Cranmer?" He spoke with studied negligence, for the topic might be uncongenial to his companion.

But Mr Dott showed no embarrassment.

"Not precisely. Hungrygrain is the property of Justin Cranmer, Esquire, a justice of the peace and a deputy-lieutenant for the county of Northumberland, and formerly of his Majesty's 2nd Regiment of Foot. Of him I know nothing, but report says that he is another than a good one. My business is with his lady, Gabriel Cornelia Lucy Perceval or Cranmer—it's surely a daft-like thing to christen a woman after an archangel—in her own right mistress of Overy Hall in the county of Norfolk, a far better estate than Hungrygrain."

"You know this Mrs Cranmer—you have seen her?" Mr Lammas asked eagerly.

"Never set eyes on her, but numerous letters have passed atween us. You'll be wondering, maybe, what a country writer in Scotland has to do with a great English lady. The matter is simple. Mrs Cranmer, through her mother, who was a Hamilton of Mells, heired some sheep-farms at the head of Waucht water, which I have the factoring of, as my father had before me. The rental's good enough, but there has aye been some factious dispute about the marches, and I've long had her instructions to sell if I could get a good bid. I've got the bid, but the deil's in her to clinch it, for the lady is like a bog-blitter, here the day and gone the morn. So when I heard she was at Hungrygrain I sent her a letter saying I proposed to wait on her in person, got the papers together, packed my pockmanty, and here I am. A chaise to Yonderdale, which is somewhere up in the Cheviot hills, an hour with her ladyship, and then I can birl home with an easy mind."

The dreariest journey has its end, and the sociable was now on high ground, looking down on a plain where a broad river twined among meadows. Suddenly they found themselves on the edge of the town of Berwick, walled and ramparted like a fortress, with red roofs shining agreeably in the morning sun. They entered by the Scotch Gate and came into a broad street which was full of bustle, for a fish market was being held along one side, and from it rose the voices of vendors accustomed at sea to shout against the wind, a babble punctuated oddly by a bugle blown from the adjacent barracks. They passed the Red Lion with its flapping sign, admired the Town Hall with its elegant piazza, turned into Hide Hill, and drew up before the broad entry of the King's Arms.

"So this is Berwick," remarked Mr Dott. "A burgh-town that cost Scotland muckle good blood. It's waesome to think that our old enemies of England have got it safe in their pouch at last."

They were the first at the tryst, for, as they were giving their bags to the boots, who had informed them that there were rooms at their disposal, Jock Kinloch's fiery face appeared on the kerb. He had changed his fisherman's clothes for the kind of thing he wore at Kinloch—corduroy pantaloons and stout shoes, an ill-cut grass-green coat, and a white hunting stock. "Nothing but my old duds," he lamented, "and me with a new suit from McKimmie's lying in camphor. Come on, Nanty, for we've no time to lose—the south coach will be starting in half an hour. I had a job to persuade Eben to set me here, for he doesn't like Berwick—that was why we put in for water this morning up the coast. He says the Meadow Haven is like hell—you can get in fine and easy, but it's damned hard to get out."

While Mr Dott entered the inn, Jock took Mr Lammas at a round pace to the Red Lion, cleaving his way through the market frequenters like the forefoot of a ship through yeasty seas. In the yard of that hostelry stood the Highflyer ready for its horses, with the baggage already strapped in its place. Mr Lammas noted the chaise which he had seen that morning on Kitterston hill, and which an ostler was washing under the instructions of a gentleman's servant. Jock, a little flustered, led the way in by a side door, and the two found themselves in a low-ceilinged hall from which a broad staircase led to the upper floors. It was empty, and he was just about to dive into a pantry in search of some servant to conduct him to the ladies, when he saw something which made him straighten his back and pull off his hat. A party was descending the stairs.

Miss Georgie had swathed herself again for the road in clothes like a polar explorer's, but Miss Kirsty had donned a lighter travelling cloak in the shape of a long pelisse of brown velvet, which was open in front and gave a glimpse of a pale-yellow muslin gown. Round her throat she wore a muslin kerchief like a small ruff which made a fitting base for her handsome head. Amazingly handsome she was, all ripe and golden, with her exquisite skin and bright hair and merry, commanding blue eyes. There was a flush on her face, and she was smiling, and the glimpse of white teeth between red lips increased her brilliance. Mr Lammas was impressed, but he was not dazzled, for he remembered Pitten's words about her ancestry. There was in her beauty a promise of coming heaviness. Some day this radiant creature might be too fair of flesh, when the girlish lines had coarsened, and the peach-bloom of the complexion had gone. Even now there was just a hint of over-ripeness.

She had been given the arm of a very splendid creature. Sir Turnour Wyse, having shed his dreadnought and submitted to the attentions of his valet, shone like Phoebus in his strength. He had a strong square face, a thought too full in the cheeks, but most wholesomely browned by weather. There was nothing flamboyant in his appearance. His dark hair, cut short in the sportsman's style, was innocent of pomatum; his fine white hands had but the one ring; he had a plain bunch of seals at his fob. And yet everything about him breathed an air of extreme fashion, the finest and most workmanlike fashion. His coat, cut full about the pockets and of some tint between plum and claret, fitted his broad shoulders like a glove. His plain neckcloth was perfectly tied, and his long hunting waistcoat had not a crease in it. His breeches were elegantly shaped, his boots seemed moulded to his legs, and his tops had the bloom of a horse-chestnut. But the man's clothes, even his figure and face, were the least of him; what made him impressive was his air of arrogant, well-bred security. Here was one whom none of life's checks would find wanting.

There followed, in those few minutes before the horses were put to the Highflyer, a scene which made Mr Lammas's spine cold with misery.

Jock Kinloch stepped forward, and it was at once apparent to his friend that he could not meet the situation. He looked shabby, flustered, provincial.

"Kirsty," he cried, and his voice faltered. "Are you all right, my dear? I heard of your mishap, and I'm here to offer my services."

It was Miss Georgie who replied, and she was clearly no friend of Jock's. "Thank you kindly, Mr John," she said with acid in her voice, "but we have no need of your services. Miss Evandale is on the road to the metropolis, and she has made all arrangements. What, may I make bold to speir, are you doing in Berwick when you should be at your books?"

She had reduced him to the undergraduate, the hobbledehoy who had intruded himself upon his elders. Jock flushed and looked piteously at Miss Kirsty. But that young lady was under the glamour of a new and prodigious experience, and she had no eyes for him. Or rather she had eyes only to dazzle, not to welcome, and for this purpose Jock was poor game. He was a slave whom she had long ago mastered and who might now be sent back to the servants' quarters. But her voice was friendly, with the casual friendliness with which one addresses a faithful but officious dog.

"I am obliged," she said, "but I have no call to make on your good nature. My aunt and I are about to take coach for the south. We are London-bound. We intend to pay a visit on the way. We shall meet, no doubt, come October at the fox-cubbing."

Then, feeling something strained in the air, she made a hasty introduction. "Mr Kinloch—Sir Turnour. The son of a country neighbour."

Had she said "a country neighbour" it would have been less hard, but the words "son of" seemed to rank the boy far down in the degrees of the negligible.

Sir Turnour was no fop with a quizzing eyeglass. He regarded Jock with the fresh critical eyes which he would have turned upon a horse or dog. Those eyes took in every detail of the ill-made clothes, the ungainly posture, the nervous lips. They were not hostile. They were not disparaging. But they seemed to look from a great height upon something very lowly.

He bowed curtly.

"The gentleman addressed you familiarly," he said. "Is he perhaps a Scotch cousin?"

"Oh no. Only a childhood's friend. Long ago we played together."

Sir Turnour smiled with infinite tolerance.

"I see. As your Scotch poet sings,

 

"'We two have paddled in the burn.'

 

It is a claim to acquaintance which should not be denied. Your servant, Mr Kinloch," and he made him a second bow. "I fear," he added, turning to his companions, "that there is no time to exchange youthful reminiscences, for I hear the horses on the cobbles. I must see you comfortably bestowed, and would to heaven I could be your fellow-traveller! But I have your promise, Miss Evandale, that you will sit by me when I drive my blue roans next to Richmond, and I shall not fail to exact its fulfilment."

He swept the ladies with him, and no one of the three had another glance for the melancholy Jock. Miss Kirsty, blushing divinely, clung closer to Sir Turnour's arm, and Miss Georgie tossed her towering head-dress. Clearly the girl was powerfully attracted by this new cavalier, and it was not less plain that he was smitten, for the eyes with which he looked down on her face were suddenly drained of arrogance.

This Jock saw, and it left him white and gaping—not wrathful, but stricken, as one who finds the foundations of life destroyed. It was the bereavement he suffered from, not the insult. But Mr Lammas was furiously angry, and had an unregenerate impulse to run after the stately gentleman and buffet his ears. For the scene he had witnessed had outraged his innermost decencies. The man had not been uncivil, nor had he been contemptuous—far better if he had, for it would have been proof of jealousy, vanity, or some other respectable human emotion. He had scarcely even been condescending. He had simply by his manner blotted out Jock from the world, ignored him as a thing too trivial for a thought. This god-like aloofness was the cruellest insolence that he had ever witnessed, and his heart ached for the boy. The great world had shown itself to the humble provinces and withered them with its stare. Mr Lammas for the moment was a hot Jacobin. He longed to take that world by the scruff, with its wealth and brave clothes and fine, well-fed, well-tended bodies, and rub its nose in something mighty unpleasant.

Jock still stood limply, like a man who has been struck between the eyes. Mr Lammas dragged him to a chair, and fetched a mug of strong ale from the adjacent taproom.

"Drink that," he said fiercely, "and pull yourself together. Don't stand mooning there like a dying duck."

Jock drank, and presently he raised his head.

"You saw that? I've got my congé with a vengeance… . 'Son of a country neighbour!' … Did you ever hear the like? And yon old Jezebel of an aunt girning at me! And Kirsty smiling up at yon fatted calf!"

His temper rose. "What did she call the fellow?" he shouted. "Sir Something Somebody? Two yards of haberdashery and buxom flesh and a red face atop of them—that's a woman's fancy. The devil fly away with the whole sex… ." He repented. "No, I won't ban little Kirsty. She's still a baby and easy glamoured. But by God I'll be even with the man." Then in sheer misery he dropped his head on his arms and wept.

A horn blew loud in the yard. Mr Lammas jumped to his feet in consternation. "I should go with the coach," he cried. "And my mails are at the King's Arms and I have no place bespoken." …

Jock clutched his arm, and turned on him a distraught face.

"You can't leave me, Nanty. For God's sake stay with me. I beg you in the name of common humanity. I summon you by the Fishers' Oath. I'm in hell, and if you leave me alone I swear I'll cut my throat or drop into the harbour."

Mr Lammas was in a sad quandary. In two minutes the coach would be gone, and he would have failed in his duty of urgent speed. But could he forsake this white-faced boy whose eyes had the pleading pathos of a dog's?

"What's your hurry, man?" Jock moaned. "Your snuffy old college business can surely wait a day."

"I have a private mission as well, and that is of extreme urgency."

"Well, you've a private mission here in Berwick that's just as urgent."

Mr Lammas came to a sudden resolution. He would take Jock into his confidence, for one of the actors in the play had five minutes back wounded him cruelly, and he would sympathise with Mr Lammas's errand.

"That man with Miss Evandale," he said, "was Sir Turnour Wyse. He is the best whip in England and reputed to be one of the best shots. He has challenged Lord Belses in a private quarrel, and is seeking him to force him to fight. At Lord Snowdoun's request I go to London to find my dear Harry, and, please God, to save his life."

These words wrought a miraculous change in Jock Kinloch. He rose violently and sent the ale-mug crashing to the floor. He seized Mr Lammas's coat by the lapels and thrust his face close to his. His sorrows seemed to be forgotten in a strong excitement.

"Wyse!" he exclaimed. "That fellow was Sir Turnour Wyse? And he is after Belses to pistol him. By God, this time I'm on the side of the hare… . And you're for London seeking Belses? You're in luck, Nanty, for you have come to the right bit and the right man. Would it surprise you to hear that at this moment Belses is a long sight nearer Berwick than London? … There's the filthy coach starting. Let it go and good speed to it, for I've done with the whole concern. We're for a bigger game, Nanty, my lad. I'll have Eben Garnock at the King's Arms in half an hour. Back with you there, and get us a room to ourselves. A room, mind you, with a key to the door."

Chapter 5 King's Business

Jock Kinloch flung himself out by the entrance which gave on the High Street, while Mr Lammas remained seated till he heard the toot of the guard's horn which proclaimed that the Highflyer had started on its southward journey. Then he sought the courtyard, from which ostlers, grooms and idle spectators were slowly clearing. There was no sign of Sir Turnour, but his broad chaise was there, and his servant was superintending the last cleaning and polishing operations. Bright as a new pin it shone in the morning sun.

At this point it behoves the chronicler to get on more easy terms with his hero. The titular dignities of Mr Lammas must be dropped, for they are now out of place in a world in which they have no meaning. To us he shall be Nanty, as he already was to Jock Kinloch and to the humblest bejant of St Andrews.

Certainly there was nothing of the professor in the young man who jostled his way among the market folk in the High Street and swung into Hide Hill, from which he looked over the shining river to the red roofs of Tweedmouth, and the green pastures which were England. His sober black clothes did not rank him among the sedentary, for his long strides were like those of a hill shepherd, and there was an odd light in his eyes. His feelings were a compound of anger and excitement. The scene at the Red Lion had stirred in him what he had scarcely looked for, a most unphilosophic wrath. That assured baronet represented a world which he had hitherto admired and cultivated, for it was to it he looked for the fulfilling of his ambitions; but now he found that it roused in him the liveliest antagonism, for it had treated a friend like dirt. Was it some Jacobinical strain in him, he wondered, that made his soul revolt against such arrogant condescension? He clenched a fist with which he would joyfully have assaulted Sir Turnour's comeliness… . But, steadying and cooling his indignation, came the reflection that he had heard news of high practical import.

In the last twelve hours he had thought of his task as meaning a visit to London, a conference with Lord Snowdoun, and a search for the missing lad in some far quarter of England. Now, if Jock spoke the truth, Lord Belses was somewhere close at hand, and at any moment he might be facing the purpose of his mission. A sudden thought made him quicken his pace. Sir Turnour was dallying in Berwick. Why? The man had come north looking for Belses, to force him to fight, or to make him eat humble pie. Sir Turnour also might be aware of Jock's news. Some time in the next day or two, somewhere in this neighbourhood, it was his business to rescue the boy from this intolerable bravo. The thought sent little shivers down Nanty's spine, for the man had looked immensely formidable, but he was conscious, too, that it stiffened his resolution. If he was to go into battle, let it be against this baronet, and all the cruel, glittering world for which he stood.

He mounted to his bedroom in the massive stone hostelry of the King's Arms. There was no sign of Mr Dott, but he found the landlord, and arranged for privacy in a little chamber on the first floor which was a withdrawing-room used by the Whitader Club at their monthly dinners. Then he descended to the street, where three minutes later Jock appeared in company with Eben Garnock. The Chief Fisher was a man a year or two on the wrong side of fifty, huge in frame, at once massive and spare, with a great grizzled beard which almost covered his broad chest. His eyebrows, too, were thick and grizzled, and from the caves beneath them eyes of an intense blue looked out upon the world. They were notable eyes, for they were at once calm and vigilant. Nothing would either escape or perturb them. His forehead was a full round dome, and when he removed his cap it combined with the baldness of his head to give him an air of solemn, brooding sagacity. But Nanty knew that that mountainous face could quicken readily into a mountainous humour, and he could picture Eben wrestling with North Sea gales, his beard tossing on the wind, taming the elements to domesticity, half elder of the Kirk and half pirate from a Norway wick.

When the three were seated in the little room, with the door locked and the key on the table, Nanty felt a sudden shyness which he had never known at Senatus meetings. His boyish upbringing told, and he realised that he looked upon Eben Garnock with a respect which he did not feel for any of his learned colleagues. These belonged to his familiar life, and he met them on equal terms; but Eben ruled in a strange world in which he was the merest novice—a world, moreover, in which for a time he must now dwell. So he left it to the Chief Fisher to begin. But Eben was a man of sparing speech, and he was occupied in filling and lighting a deep-bowled pipe. So there was a short silence, while Jock looked out from the window on the main courtyard.

"There's the man who was at breakfast," he reported. "The town-clerk, I mean. I wonder where he is bound for."

Nanty looked out, and saw Mr Dott seated in a high red gig with yellow wheels. In the shafts was an animal, one of whose near progenitors must have been a carthorse. His brown satchel was under his arm, and his air was that of a country doctor suddenly called in ill weather to visit a distant patient, a combination of distaste and dutiful resolution.

"I know, for he told me. He is going on legal business to a house called Hungrygrain in the Cheviot hills."

Jock cried out, and Eben, having got his pipe going, looked sharply at Jock.

"He'll find some wild things there," said the latter. "Hungrygrain! If that isn't the queerest chance! Yonderdale's no place just now for a poking lawyer, and he has as much hope of doing business as a snowball of rolling through hell. He'll likely take some mischief. A decent soul, too. I wish it had been possible to warn him."

"What is wrong with Hungrygrain besides the name?" Nanty asked.

Jock laughed. "If you could tell me that you would tell me something that Eben would like very greatly to know. Aye, and his Majesty's Government, too… . We'd better get to work, for there is no time to waste. All the cards go on to the table, Nanty Lammas—for Nanty, you are in this ploy, and St Salvator's and the logic class-room are at the other side of the moon. There are no secrets between us, for we are all Free Fishers. Eben has empowered me to speak, for I have more of the gift of the gab than him. Well, the first thing I have to say to you is that this is King's business, and devilish high business. Three days back Eben was closeted with the Lord Advocate and with other folk that shall be nameless, and he got his orders. It's not the first job he has done for his Majesty, though it may be the kittlest, and he did me the honour to pick me along with Bob Muschat, for he wanted somebody who had some pretension to gentility. Ay, gentility," he added bitterly, "though yon cedar of Lebanon up at the Red Lion might not allow the claim."

The broken-hearted lover seemed to have disappeared. Jock spoke with assurance and a crisp vigour.

"And you're in it, too, Nanty, as Providence has ordained, and your St Andrews business must go hang. You saw my father last night, and I'll warrant your talk wasn't only about college property. Was it about Belses?"

The other nodded.

"I guessed as much. Now let us have your story, and then you'll hear ours. I have a notion they'll fit together like the squares on a dambrod."

Nanty repeated the gist of what Lord Mannour had told him, while Jock listened with sundry exclamations, and Eben silently with eyes on the floor.

"And I thought the fellow was my enemy," was Jock's comment. "And I had worked myself into a fine glow of hatred, as I told you on the Pittenweem road. Now I could love him like a brother. The man's a victim to be pitied."

"And to be rescued."

"Ay, please God, to be rescued. You say that that red-faced baronet is seeking his blood? Well, I'm seeking his, or my name is not John Kinloch, and that simplifies my purpose, though it complicates the job. He is still in Berwick?

"I saw his chaise twenty minutes ago in the Red Lion yard."

"Then it's possible that he knows what we know—that he is close on his quarry. God, there'll soon be rough work at Hungrygrain."

"Hungrygrain?"

"Just Hungrygrain. That is where my Lord Belses is at the moment. It's a bleak, God-forgotten spot among whaups and peesweeps and peatmosses. But there have been queer ongoings there for many a day, and at this very hour there are queerer still. And now there's converging upon that moorland bit a dour country writer, who'll likely get his throat cut, and a fine gentleman in buckskins who seeks satisfaction for his wounded honour. He'll maybe get more satisfaction than he likes. It's a bonny kettle of fish, and it will soon come to the boil."

"We must get the poor boy out of the place before his pursuer gets there." Nanty was on his feet, for his immediate duty seemed plain.

"Sit you down," said Jock. "The thing is not so simple as that. You have still to hear our side of the business—the King's side. My father told you that Belses was being made a fool of by a woman. Well, that woman is the pivot of the thing. Mrs Cranmer they call her."

"Mr Dott's client."

"A bonny client! Now what takes a woman like Mrs Cranmer to have for her doer a Scots writer from a forsaken hole like Waucht?"

"Mr Dott said she was kin to the Hamiltons of Mells and had some farms on Waucht side."

"So? If there's Scots blood in her, that makes her the more dangerous. But, whether or not, there's no question of her power for ill, and it would seem that she comes between Ministers and their sleep. What kind of a character did my father give her?"

"He said she was young and handsome, and a religious enthusiast, and tainted with Jacobinical views."

"Aye. That's the character she has with most people, and that's the kind of candle that attracts a poor moth like Belses. I wonder if my father knows more, or my Lord Snowdoun. Maybe not, for the Cranmer case is not yet a Cabinet matter, I understand—still in the stage of proof, and not ripe for judgment. Maybe it is still secret between the Advocate and the military and the Free Fishers." He looked towards Eben, who gravely nodded.

"Rid your mind of that picture, Nanty, my man," he went on; "the innocent sweet lady, a thought highflying in her politics, the kind of siren to capture a young man of sensibility. Put something very different in its place. Put a woman who hates this land of Britain with a cold hatred—who will stick at nothing to get her ends—who can play a desperate game with the patience of Job and the subtlety of Monsieur Talleyrand and the courage of Lucifer—who does not know the meaning of love or honour or friendship—who will use every gift of mind and body for a black purpose. Have you got that clear, for it's gospel truth? Eben has seen some of the proofs of it, and they damn her to the lowest hell."

Nanty shuddered. "My poor Harry!" he muttered.

"Well may you say your poor Harry. He is nothing more than a cat's-paw. To have the son of my Lord Snowdoun, the manager of Scotland, dangling at her petticoat tails is a sort of evidence of respectability, you see, and she misses no point in the game."

"That game—what is it?" Nanty asked.

"It's easy told. Britain, as I have often heard you say, is fighting for her life and for the liberties of Europe. We have plenty of ill-wishers at home to stir up trouble, and the more trouble here the weaker our stroke will be on the battlefield. That's an axiom, as you logicians say. We are fighting the greatest military genius of all history, and that does not leave us much margin. Whatever happens, it will be a damned near thing. So any knowledge of our plans that may get to the enemy is worth a hundredfold more than in an ordinary war, the margin, as I say, being so close. That is what this beldame is doing. She has spun her web up and down the land, even in high places, and the silly flies walk in. She had made a great bureau of treason to foster revolution at home and to send damning confidences abroad."

"An incendiary and a spy!"

"You've hit the mark, Nanty. Arch-incendiary and master-spy. Now that web has to be swept down and the spider destroyed."

Jock's face had an earnest passion which made him suddenly an older and shrewder man. For the first time he reminded Nanty of his father.

"That is a shocking tale," he said. "This woman—is she wife or widow?"

"She has a husband, and that is one of her chief assets. The other is the reputation she has built up for sentimental innocence. Her husband, Justin Cranmer, is a trumpery body, another cat's-paw. Eben can tell you of him."

"A long, black-avised man," said the Chief Fisher, "wi' a skin like a candle-dowp. I've seen him twa-three times. When he's at home he is either hunting the hills wi' his dowgs, or lying as fou' as the Baltic—at least that's what they tell me. But the feck o' the time he's ranging the land at cockings and horse-racings."

"Ay," said Jock, "but he's the laird of Hungrygrain, and Hungrygrain is a godsend to his lady wife. She has estates of her own in Norfolk, so she is well-dowered, besides what her paymasters give her. But Norfolk is too conspicuous a place for her game, so her headquarters are shifted to the North. The devil might have made Hungrygrain for her purpose. It lies at the back end of a moorland glen called Yonderdale, and there's no road but a drove-road within five miles. There's a bit of a clachan, but the inhabitants are all Squire Cranmer's folk, and a savage pack of heathens by all tales. There are no neighbours except a few drunken bonnet-lairds, and Cheviot hems it in like a dyke. Above all, it is not ten miles from the sea—take note of that, Nanty—a lonely bit of coast with a snug little harbour at a burn mouth. She is a noble spirit, her friends say, unequally yoked to a boor, but her wifely duty and her care for the poor tenant-bodies take her often to Hungrygrain. But when she is there this Methody fine lady queens it among poachers and black-fishers and tinklers who do her biddings and know fine that they would lose their tongues if they blabbed… . What do you think of my picture? It's wilder than anything in Walter Scott or Lord Byron, but Eben will bear me out that it's God's truth."

"If Harry has gone there, surely he will learn the facts and be disillusioned."

"That is just what puzzles me. This morning we heard, never mind how, that he had arrived there yesterday. We had heard, too, some rumour of his quarrel with Wyse. He was looking for sanctuary no doubt, and Hungrygrain struck him as remote and secret. Very likely the woman knew nothing of his coming till he appeared, and may not have welcomed him. If she connived at it, then it looks as if she had made him a partner in her infamy."

"That I will never believe," said Nanty firmly.

"Well, put that question aside, for we shall soon be enlightened. Now you must hear more of Hungrygrain. Eben, you take up the tale."

"In the auld days afore the Union," said the Chief Fisher, "there was a brisk smuggling trade across the Border. Ye'll maybe have heard o' that, Mr Lammas. Every second man in Jeddart, they say, was a free-trader. Well, Yonderdale was the hame o' the business, and the laird o' Hungrygrain the chief manager o't, and the cotter-folk o' Hungrygrain deep to their necks in it. They were a wild clan wi' an ill name—the warst fighters at ilka fair from Stagshawbank to St Boswells, a thrawn lot that stuck thegither and made ony man's quarrel the quarrel o' a'. Weel, the Union came, but Yonderdale didna change its trade. It turned its eyes to the sea, and found a howff where it could land its bits o' contraband and send them along the Border. Yondermouth is nae use, for the Water o' Yonder taks a long bend to the south afore it wins to the sea, and besides, Yondermouth is a well-kenned fisher toun where lawless doings wad be bridled—a toun like our ain Leven or Anster. So they found what they wanted up north along the shore at a place they ca' Hopcraw, where a burn comes in frae the hills. There's deep water there for them that ken where to look for it, and there's not a cot-house within three mile. Mair, by a straight road over the muir it's no above ten mile frae Hungrygrain. The place is well kenned by us fishers, but it's no our business to speak o't. The gaugers, too, have a notion o't, but they never seem to hit the right hour and the right corner, and mony a weary traivel they've had for small purpose. There's nae better mart for the free trade on the east shore, and a' the lairds frae Liddel to Till, aye and ower the Border too, get their tea and brandy and tobacco from the guid folk o' Hopcraw."

"And that's the channel through which this woman communicates with France?—"

"One o' them. Nae doubt there's others—one maybe down in the Norfolk sands near her ain estates—but Hopcraw is the chief."

"What are your orders from Government?"

"Just to watch—and report. We have word that one of her ploys is comin' to a heid, and we hope to nip it, and bring to justice them that's 'sponsible."

"That will mean violence and fighting."

"Na, na. The Free Fishers are men o' peace. Nae fechtin' for us except in our ain canny way o' business. There's King's ships that'll dae what fechtin' is needit, and there's a plan by which we can get word to them."

"Then your purpose is to go to Hopcraw?"

"No me," said Eben with a slow smile which brought his brows down over his eyes. "To steer for Hopcraw wad be like kindling a beacon on the hilltops. We maun gang warily in this business, for Hungrygrain has plenty sharp een on the watch. That's why I was sweir to come into this river o' Tweed. I wadna trust the Berwick boats that carry the frostit saumons to London, for some o' them are chief wi' Hungrygrain and wad signal news o' us if they suspected our job. Na, we're for Youndermouth, where I'm well-kenned. Some o' our Fife lads are out east at the Banks at the white-fishing, and what mair natural than that we should join them? We'll hae some sma' trouble wi' a yaird that'll take us in there for twa-three days to Davie Dimmock, the boat-builder's, and while we're lying snug we'll send out spies like the auld Israelites."

Jock burst in.

"Eben will keep the Merry Mouth in Yondermouth, and find some way of slipping up to Hopcraw and seeing what goes on there. Meantime Bob Muschat and I take a quiet step Yonderdale way. Ay, and you too, Nanty, for we need you to deal with Belses. There's a ticklish job there for somebody."

"I cannot. I must be off at once to Hungrygrain by the shortest road. I tell you, there's not a moment to lose, for Sir Turnour Wyse may get to him this very day."

"Remember your calling, Nanty," said Jock. "Logic, my brave boy! The baronet is not going to pistol your Harry like a common cut-throat. Whatever mischief is on foot, we have a day or two of grace to prevent it. What good would you do if you posted off to Hungrygrain and hammered at the front door? They would only set the dogs on you, for you have no locus, as my father would say. You would find the folk there in an ill key, pestered by a bumptious lawyer, and maybe on the top of it the baronet damning their eyes and telling them they are dirt. What would you do in such a collieshangie? No, no, our way's the best. The wind's fair, and we'll drop down the coast, and be in Yondermouth in the afternoon. There's a grand moon, and at the darkening you and me and Bob will slip off up the water, and see what's to be seen. They that work with Hungrygrain must take the tinkler's road—the deep wood and the thick bracken and the long heather."

"Then for Heaven's sake let us be off."

"You're coming?"

"I'm coming. And I warn you I'll press the pace."

"God, Nanty, you're a man after my heart," Jock cried. "We're in luck, Eben. We have the Law on our side, and now we've got the Gospel. The expeditionary force is complete, chaplain and all."

In the street they looked down Hide Hill towards the Sand Gate; it dropped steeply to a quay, beyond which the river lay like a broad band of light. The passers-by on the kerb had come to a halt, for over the cobbles rattled a striking equipage. It was a broad chaise, drawn by two stout galloways, with a dicky behind in which a servant sat with folded arms. Sir Turnour had shed his dreadnought in the warm spring sunshine, and his shoulders showed trim and square on the box-seat. Rarely had Berwick seen a better-shaped coat, or a smarter beaver, or so complete a mastery of whip and ribbons, as he steered the pair at a good pace down the uneven street amid the fishcarts and country wagons.

The three watched him as he reached the Sand Gate and turned west along the dock side.

"He's a comely body, your baronet," said Eben, "and he can manage a horse. He's for the English Gate and the Tweed brig."

"I wish I knew his purpose," said Nanty. "For all we can tell he may be on his way to London."

Two of the onlookers were commenting on the sight, horsy-looking gentry in tight breeches and battered leggings.

"Whae is the gentleman?" one asked. "I never saw beasts better guidit."

"I dinna ken," was the answer. "He doesna belong hereways."

"For Newcastle, think ye?"

"No him. He has gotten the pair that Davidson hires out for the Yetholm coursin'. Slugs on the high-road but graund on the braes. That ane's no for Newcastle. He's for the hills."

Chapter 6 In Which a Town-Clerk is Ill received

Mr Duncan Dott, perched atop of the narrow gig of the King's Arms, prepared to enjoy himself. His valise was left behind at the inn, for he proposed to return there in the evening, and had indeed bespoken for himself a snug little supper. His only baggage was his brown leather satchel of papers, which was securely wedged between himself and the driver. The morning was fresh, what wind there was blew from the north-west, and the ascending sun promised before noon the mellow warmth of spring. Only in the west, where at a great distance the valley was closed by a line of little hills, a thin cloudbank broke the even blue of the sky.

"It'll be a grand day," he observed to his companion. "The wind's in a dry airt."

The other pursed his lips.

"Ye'll maybe need your topcoat or night. I dinna like yon wee cluds, and it was ower bright this mornin' when I was washin' my face."

As they crossed the bridge of Tweed the tide was running and the salmon-cobles were straining at their moorings. Thereafter they entered a shining world, fields of bent noisy with young lambs, cot-houses snowy with fresh harling, hawthorns bursting into green, and on their left the sea, which had no colour but shone like a vast crystal with essential light. Mr Dott's spirits soared, and he unbuttoned his great-coat so that the air could play about his throat.

"England's a fine country," he remarked. "It's the first time I've crossed the Border, and if it's all like this I don't blame our forbears for raiding it whiles to see what they could find. There's sour bits in Scotland."

"There's sour bits in England," said the driver, a morose man called Niven. "Ye're for Yonderdale? Wait till ye see it afore ye mak up your mind about England."

"What sort of a place is Yonderdale?" Mr Dott enquired.

"Sour," said the driver, and spat. "Sour I would ca' it. A lang dreich glen—naething but burns and hill-faces—perishin' cauld in winter, for the drifts at the top o't dinna melt till May, and no that cheery in the best o' weather. It's ower high up in Cheviot for human habitation. What takes ye to Yonderdale, sir?"

"Business. A small matter of business."

The other laughed.

"It's no muckle business gangs up Yonder water, except its ain kind o' business, and I'll wager that's no your kind. Ye're a lawyer, I take it? Well, there's just the one sort o' law in Yonderdale and that's the stout arm and the holly cudgel. Ay, and waur. There's sudden deaths up thereaways that nae coroner sits on. Ye'll no ken what a coroner is, maybe?—he's a kind of a procurator fiscal."

"Dearie me," said Mr Dott. "That's a bad account. Does your job take you often there?"

"No above twice a year—wi' a dealer in the back-end after the hogg lambs, or a farmer seekin' store cattle. And Yonderdale doesna come muckle our way, neither. They're queer folk and keep themselves to themselves, nae doubt wi' good cause. What part o' Yonderdale are ye for?"

Mr Dott's answer induced a whistle, a lugubrious sound which expressed something more than surprise.

"Hungrygrain! Keep us, but what seek ye at Hungrygrain? Are ye acquaint wi' the folks there? Are ye expectit?"

"I have given notice of my coming," said Mr Dott primly.

The driver seemed to ponder. His taciturnity had given place to curiosity, for he proceeded to ply Mr Dott with questions, which that gentleman answered in monosyllables. He had become suddenly the confidential man of business. One question only he asked in return—had Niven ever seen or spoken to Squire Cranmer?

"Spoken to him? No likely. But I've seen him a score o' times, and I've heard enough about him to fill a book."

But what he had heard he showed no wish to communicate. "There's an owercome in the hills, 'queer like the folk o' Hungrygrain,' and if a' tales be true the squire's the queerest o' the batch. If your business is wi' him I wish ye weel, for he's a kittle customer, and if ye're servin' a writ or onything unpleasant ye'll be lucky to get awa' wi' hale banes. Dinna count on me, for I meddle not wi' Hungrygrain. I'll take ye there, which is my lawful calling, and syne ye maun fend for yoursel'."

Mr Dott's spirits were a little dashed, especially as Niven with a fateful countenance continued to ingeminate the word "Hungrygrain." They had left the shore road and were now in a country of sheep-walks, fields of grass bounded by drystone dykes, and now and then a common bright with furze and the young sprouts of heather. It was no longer the gleaming country of the morning, for, though the sun still shone, colour seemed to have gone out of the landscape, which now wore an air of bleakness and melancholy. Presently they topped a ridge, and looked across a shallow trough of bog and bent to the lift of a mountain range. On their left was the loom of woodlands with the sea beyond, and to their right a glimpse of a habitable farming country, but the immediate prospect was strangely wild and desolate. The mountains had a thick veil of cloud on their summits, a veil which seemed to be steadily dropping lower.

"Cheviot," said Niven, pointing with his whip. "And ill weather on its road. We'll be drookit or we win hame. That's the water o' Yonder ye see in the howe, and Yonderdale begins where the twae hills hurkle thegither. Hungrygrain is at the backside o' the bigger yin."

As they were about to descend into a hollow, there came a sound of wheels behind them, and Niven drew sharply into the roadside to allow another conveyance to pass. This was a broad chaise with a dicky behind in which a servant sat. In the driver's seat was a figure more in keeping with Hyde Park or the Brighton road than with that moorland solitude. He acknowledged Niven's courtesy by raising his whip, and the pair of horses, handled by a master, took the hill at a steady trot.

"Now, whae the deevil is that?" Niven enquired. Thoughts of Hungrygrain seemed to have laid on him a spell of depression which was broken by the spectacle of this splendid gentleman. "He's drivin' the Red Lion galloways, and Davidson doesna lend them to a' body. Man, he's a provost at the job. Did ye see the way he managed the near beast when he was for shyin' at the bog aik?"

"I know who the gentleman is," said Mr Dott. "He made himself useful this morning at the accident to the Edinburgh coach of which I told you. He is a sporting baronet—one Sir Turnour Wyse. What puzzles me is what he can want in Yonderdale."

"He's no for Yonderdale. The Yonderdale turn is twae miles on, and this road gangs to mony places. Alnwick, for yin. Ay, he'll be for the Duke's at Alnwick. He's no the breed that frequents Yonderdale."

The rain began before they reached the hills, a thin spring rain with little wind behind it. It blanketed the view except for a few hundred yards of moor. Niven turned to his right up a stony rut like the track to a farm-town. Presently a knuckle of hill loomed through the mist, and the road descended through a coppice of wildwood to the edge of a stream which was running low in the spring drought.

"The water o' Yonder," said Niven. "Aye when I've been here afore it has been running frae bank to brae. This is a dooms ill road, but Yonderdale doesna work muckle wi' wheeled carriages. Pack-horses and shanks's pony is mair its way o't. We'll draw up and eat our piece, sir, if ye're agreeable, for we're no above three miles frae Hungrygrain."

"Is there no inn?" asked Mr Dott, who had hoped for a dram with his bread and cheese.

"There's an inn, but it's the other side o' the water, and we'll no trouble it the day. Purdey is the man that keeps it, and he's not just precisely a friend o' mine. If ye ca'd him an ill-tongued sauvage ye wadna be far wrong."

They ate their snack in the lee of a clump of rowens, a cold meal to which the weather made an indifferent kitchen. Soon the drizzle became a downpour, and in that funnel of a glen the wind gathered force, and drove the rain in spouts and sheets which searched out every corner of the travellers' persons.

"Let's get on," said Mr Dott, shaking a deluge from his hat. "My business will not take long, and then I'm for dry breeks and the fireside." Niven, a sodden pillar of depression, whipped up his beast and the gig jolted out of the trees up a long incline.

Even in the thick weather Mr Dott realised that he was coming into a different kind of country. He was conscious of open spaces around him instead of coverts. They passed a cottage or two, and the smell of peat-reek tantalised him with a hint of unattainable comfort. It had become colder and he shivered a little inside his great-coat. Three miles, Niven had said; then half an hour's talk, a scart or two of the pen, and his face was set for his native Waucht.

A heavy gate of axe-hewn bars shut the road, and he had to descend and open it with cramped fingers. It looked as if they were entering some sort of neglected policies. Stunted evergreens dotted the roadside, and a burn was crossed by what had once been an ornamental bridge with a broken stucco coping. Mr Dott peered into the gloom to detect the first sign of a dwelling.

Suddenly at a turn of the road a man stepped from a clump of hollies.

He was a long man in a frieze coat, and on his head was a leather cap with the flaps tied under his chin—a cross between keeper and earth-stopper. He held up a hand and whistled, and at the sound two men appeared from the opposite side of the road, smaller men, but cut to the same pattern. He roughly seized the horse's bridle and forced him back.

"Who are you that make so free with Hungrygrain?" he asked in a voice as harsh as a crow's. Mr Dott observed that his accent was not that of a peasant.

"Canny, friend," said Niven. "We're frae the King's Arms in Berwick. This gentleman is seekin' a word wi' the laird."

Mr Dott spoke up.

"I have announced my coming by letter to her ladyship. It's with her that my business lies, for I'm the factor of her lands in Scotland."

The tall man did not take his hand from the bridle.

"Are you so! A responsible job. But you have come on a fool's errand, for we have no use for factors in Hungrygrain. Turn you about and back with you before you get a belt on your hinderlands."

Mr Dott's temper rose. "What the devil have you to do with your mistress's affairs? I tell you this is an important matter in which good money is involved. Take your hand from the beast's head or I'll report you for insolence."

The man laughed, showing broken teeth.

"You're a brisk little bantam, but you are crowing on the wrong dungheap. There is no mistress here."

"But I had it from her own pen that she was to be here in this week of April. Stand out of the way. I will see the lady."

"There is no lady here."

"Where is she?"

"Where indeed?" The man had a disquieting gap-toothed grin. "Where can she be? Maybe

 

'Up the mossy mountain

And down the dowie glen?'

 

Anyway, she is not here."

"Then I will speak with Squire Cranmer."

The other's grin vanished, and his face became suddenly fierce and malevolent.

"You will not speak with the Squire. You'll be out of here in ten seconds. You're not wanted."

"I protest," Mr Dott began, but his words were cut short, for the tall man swung the horse round so violently that it almost fell, and the wheels crashed into a tangle of young birches. One of the others struck the animal over the rump with a cutting switch, and the next the travellers knew they were being borne at a gallop back the road they had come.

Niven after five minutes succeeded in pulling up on a little hill. He wiped his brow with a damp sleeve.

"So that's that," he observed. "Did I no tell you there were queer folk in Hungrygrain?"

Mr Dott was in a furious temper. "Heard you ever the like of such impudence? You'll turn this moment and go back."

"No me. I'm no for a slit weazand, and that's what we'll get if we gang contrar to Gibbie Winfortune."

"Winfortune?"

"Ay, that's the name o' the lang chiel."

"You know him?"

"Muckle o' him and naething that's guid. I'm bauld enough in my day, but the bauldest will keep a quiet tongue if Winfortune is on the road. He's kenned for the wildest deevil atween Tyne and Till."

The rain had stopped and the wind had blown clear a space in the clouds which suddenly revealed the sun. What had been an enclave in the fog expanded for a moment into a wide landscape. Mr Dott looked back, and got his first view of Hungrygrain.

The glen above the gorge became a valley a mile broad between steep grey-green hills. To Mr Dott, accustomed to Waucht side, where the lairds vied with each other in lining their fields with strips of woodland and crowning the tops with acres of feathery larch, the place seemed indecently bare. There appeared to be no cultivation, no ploughland. He was on an eminence and could see the house itself in its shabby policies, and the upper course of the stream. The Yonder ran in a deep-cut green trench well below the valley level, so that it showed no friendly pools and shallows, but had the secret air of a river underground. The containing walls of the hills seemed so sheer that only a goat could graze on them. Mr Dott had been wont to look on a pastoral upland as a thing homely and kindly, but this place had a horrid savagery, a chill sharper than the April rain.

But it was the sight of the house of Hungrygrain that sent a shiver down his spine. He had never been so unpleasantly affected by any human habitation. It stood in what may once have been a lawn, but was now a rough field. Part was a ruinous peel-tower, to which wings had been added of good whinstone with some pretensions to elegance; likewise there was a small square building connected with the rest by a kind of arcade. The whole place was of an extreme shabbiness, but, except for the peel, it was not in decay; it was lived in, used, misused, a place not of death and emptiness, but crowded with a maleficent life. Secret, too, as secret as the deep-trenched stream. The blink of sun only made it more eerie. It would have been more decent, he felt, had it been perpetually shrouded in mist, for no sunshine could make it other than menacing and furtive.

"An ugly bit," said the philosophic Niven. "Weel, the sooner we're ower Tweed the better."

"I'm not going back," said Mr Dott.

"Are ye clean daft?"

Mr Dott felt that he was, but the behaviour of the man Winfortune had roused in his soul a desperate obstinacy which mystified and slightly scared him.

"I do not leave till I have done my business. I did not travel all these miles from Waucht to be turned away by an impudent dog of a gamekeeper. You will turn and go back."

"I'll do naething of the kind. I'm not meeting my Maker afore my time. Bethink ye, sir. If ye go back to Hungrygrain ye'll be flung out and get rougher usage than afore. One man canna force a door that a dozen are haudin' against him."

"Nevertheless, I must try. And if you will not take me, my feet will." Suiting his action to his words Mr Dott attempted to descend from the gig.

Niven rubbed his chin in dire perplexity.

"If I did my duty I would carry ye back to Berwick, though I had to fell ye first… . Bide a wee, sir. There's maybe another way. Ye canna get into Hungrygrain wi' Winfortune on the rampage, but he'll no aye be there. Half his time they tell me is spent ryngin' the country. What for should ye no sit ye down somewhere in Yonderdale and wait your chance? Ye'd maybe find the leddy walkin' her lane. Or get a word wi' the maister, whae's mair ceevil-spoken than the man."

"You're right," said Mr Dott. "I'll go to the inn."

"Ye maunna do that. Purdey's ower thick wi' Winfortune. Na, na, but I'll tell ye what. I'll tak ye to the manse."

"The manse? We're not in Scotland."

"No, but Yonderdale has a minister. Oh, a rector o' the parish likewise that bides in the low country, but up here there's a kirk, manse and minister. Ye see, sir, in the auld days the folk came to Yonderdale maistly frae the other side o' the Border— frae Rule Water and Jeddart way—in the early days o' the lang sheep. And they brought their kirk wi' them, and built a manse, and had their placed minister and twae screeds ilka Sabbath day. Things is sore changed now, and I doubt there's few darkens the kirk door, forby a wheen wives and weans. But there's a minister still, whae baptises them and buries them, and marries them when they've the decency to think o' lawfu' marriage. His name's Blackstocks, Richie Blackstocks, frae Ettrick or Yarrow, I mindna which. He's an auld man that bides alane wi' nae wife, and by a' accounts a quiet mensefu' body and wise enough to let sleepin' tykes lie. He'll gie ye a bed for the nicht, and tell ye the lie o' the land. I'll drive ye to the manse. It's down in the wuds they ca' Yonder Dene."

They jogged downhill back to the narrow part of the glen and the thick coverts, Mr Dott's mind in a sad ferment. He was at once resolved and miserably afraid. The training of a lifetime forbade him to give up a piece of business before it was completed, but in Waucht there were peaceable folk who treated him with respect, and never before had he encountered naked savagery. His world was disrupted, he had lost his bearings, and it was necessary that he should find again the points of his mental compass.

The brief sunlight passed, and once again the rain descended, this time with a steadiness which promised a wet evening. Niven turned down a woodland track which seemed to lead towards the stream. In a few hundred yards it opened upon a clearing in the trees, a shelf of level ground beyond and behind which, even in the wild weather, could be heard the churning of the Yonder. A low privet hedge bounded a little garden.

"Here's the manse," said Niven. "Ye've nae baggage? Weel, I'll wait till I see ye inside."

Mr Dott pushed open a white gate and very stiffly advanced up a path gravelled with rough pebbles from the stream. The house was scarcely more than a cottage, but it had been newly whitewashed, the garden was tidy and bright with daffodil and primrose, and from the smoking chimney came the comforting smell of peat-reek.

He knocked at the door, but there was no answer. Again he knocked, and then with the head of his stick he beat a loud tattoo. By and by steps were heard approaching, the latch was lifted, and before him stood a little old man. Behind this figure a moment later appeared a second, a stalwart old woman in a mutch with her skirts kilted as if she had been tramping the fields. It was she who spoke.

"Whae is it? If ye're frae Hedderwick's at Yondermouth ye can gang back, for there's nae mair dealings atween him and huz. The last seed tatties ye sent us were a black disgrace."

"I am a traveller from Scotland," said Mr Dott, "with business at Hungrygrain, on which I would fain as a fellow Scot consult the minister."

The woman's face changed.

"Come inbye, sir," she said. "There's no mony travellers seek the manse o' Yonderdale. Come your ways in, for ye canna stand there in this unconvenantit weather. And you, sir," this to the old man, "ye'll get your death o' cauld standin' there in your hosen feet. Where's your bauchles?"

As he entered Mr Dott heard wheels move on the road. Niven, seeing him safely bestowed, had departed for Berwick.

He was ushered into a little low-ceilinged room, with books everywhere, lining the walls in home-made shelves, stacked in corners, and piled on chairs and on most of the table. A peat-fire glowed dully, and a little clock on the mantelpiece as they entered chimed very sweetly the hour of five.

"Ye'll hae to change your clothes," said the woman, "for ye're as wat as a flowe-moss. Ye'll put on a sark o' the minister's and an auld pair o' his breeks, and his chamber-robe, till your ain things are dried. I'll mak up a bed for ye, and get ye ane o' his nightgowns, though it'll maybe jimp your size… . Ye're frae Scotland, sir? Whatna pairt?

"Waucht!" she cried. "Man, I was bred within five miles o't, though we flittit to Caddonside when I was a young lassie. Brydon, they ca' me, and we bode at the Blackcleuchfoot. It's heartsome to see a body frae Waucht. Quick wi' your changin', sir, for ye'll be wantin' meat. The minister has his supper at six."

The old man had not spoken, but had made little sounds of welcome, and now he patted Mr Dott's arm. He had thin silvery hair which hung almost to his shoulders, and a fine-drawn face the colour of old ivory. His dress was knee-breeches of homespun, homespun stockings, and a very shabby black coat. He looked old, but hale, and there was still vigour in his movements. Mr Dott, as he got rid of his drenched garments, began to think less evilly of Yonderdale.

Half an hour later he sat warm and dry before a fire which had been enlivened with birch billets. Presently came the housekeeper with a summons to meat, and in the other living-room, which looked towards the stream, he listened to a lengthy grace. Then the three fell to a meal of burn trout, oatcakes, scones, cloudberry jam, and thick creamy milk, after which the host concocted a modest bowl of toddy.

"Awa' into the study," the housekeeper told them, "and hae your crack. The weather's clearin' and you'll maybe get your nightcap after a'. The minister," she turned to Mr Dott, "is fond o' a breath o' caller air afore he gangs to his bed. He ca's it his nightcap, and, certes, it maun be guid for his health, for there was never a man o' his age less troubled wi' his perishin' body."

The conversation at the meal had been of the most formal kind, chiefly, on Mr Dott's part, replies to the housekeeper's questions about Waucht and its people. But when the two men sat by the study fire they seemed to enter suddenly into intimacy. Mr Dott's voice may have been one reason, the soft singsong very different from the Northumbrian burr, and the sight of the minister's face was another, for from every line of it shone a kindly simplicity. But it was simplicity that did not exclude shrewdness, for he had already guessed Mr Dott's predicament.

"You went to Hungrygrain on an honest errand, and got a surly answer? That, I regret to say, is nothing uncommon… . No, I have no dealings with the squire or his people. I cannot tell you if Mrs Cranmer is there now. I see none of the family. Three years ago when she was a bride she visited me, but since then I have heard little of her and have seen nothing. I fear that it may be an ill-assorted marriage, and I do not think it can be the lady's fault, for she seemed to me as kind as she was beautiful… . The squire I can hardly claim even as an acquaintance. There is a small endowment from which my stipend is paid by a firm of Newcastle lawyers, so I have no cause to meet Squire Cranmer on worldly affairs, and he does not frequent the house of God."

Mr Blackstocks drew a strange picture of the valley. "A hundred years ago," he said, "Yonderdale was a pleasant little haven by a burnside. The Squire Cranmer of that day had lands in Teviotdale through his wife, and was a leader in the new ways of sheep-farming. So he brought many Scots folk to Yonderdale, and with them their Presbyterian faith. Since then there has been a sad decline, both in the lairds and in the people. The place had always a certain repute for lawlessness, but then it was no worse than shifting from glen to glen merchandise which had not paid the King his dues. But soon the thing took a darker colour. Our men became known as hard drinkers and desperate fighters, and got an ill name over all the Border. When I came here forty years ago I lifted up my testimony against the iniquity, and for ten years I was a voice crying in the wilderness. It was as useless, Mr Dott, as the bleating of a snipe. But I loved the place and some of the folk and I resolved to stay here. I could still lead a sheep or two into the fold, and if Ephraim was joined to his idols I might be of use to Ephraim's wife and bairns. I had failed as an iconoclast, but I believed that I might still be a comforter. So I stayed on, and shall doubtless lay my bones here."

The old man's conversation was as soothing to Mr Dott as the warm fire and the excellent supper. His errand and the mischances of the day slipped from his mind, and he was content to explore the soul of this philosopher, for he had a lively interest in his fellows. He asked his host how he filled his time.

"Too pleasantly, I fear," was the answer. "I have the duties of my calling—my diets of worship on the Sabbath, and such pastoral visitation as I am permitted. But for the rest I have a noble leisure, and I am fortunate enough to have the tastes to fill it. I am a devout lover of nature and something of a naturalist. I derive much happiness from cultivating my little garden, and I am a noted bee-keeper. But I have two occupations which lie next my heart. Imprimis, I am a fisherman, and I think I have cast a fly in every burn in Cheviot, for I used to be a famous walker, Mr Dott, and these ageing shanks of mine can still do their twenty miles in a day over heather. Yonder is a great stream for fish—the trouts you ate at supper were taken from it by myself. It is a sport in which I have no competitor save the little boys who guddle the stones, for the folk of the glen follow less innocent pursuits. Secundo, I have my books. You see them round you, and soon they will drive me out of house and home. A new volume from Newcastle or Edinburgh is my chief indulgence. You are college-bred, Mr Dott?"

"Glasgow," was the answer.

"Ah, I was at the college of Edinburgh, and I fear I gave more time to pagan lore than to the Scriptures. I fell in love with the classics and the classical philosophers. I mind how my worthy father would reprehend me when I quoted Plato or Seneca. He was a divine of the old Scottish stamp and would shake his head woefully. 'I am not concerned,' he would say, 'to hear what the heathen have thought. What did Mr Alexander Henderson think, or Mr George Gillespie, or Mr Samuel Rutherford?' But he lived to see me a placed minister, though he never held me quite sound in the fundamentals… . Dearie me! As we grow old we see that there are many roads to Jerusalem. Uno itinere non potest pervenire ad tam grande secretum. The classics have ever since been my delight, and I amuse myself by little ventures in translation—in emendation, too—the idle pleasures of an idle old man. So with that and angling I fill my days contentedly."

"You're the first true philosopher I have ever met," said Mr Dott. "Man, you've discovered the secret of a happy life."

The minister smiled and held up a deprecatory hand.

"No, no," he said. "Only of an idle one. Yet I hope I do not let these trifling joys come between me and my duty God-wards. I try to sit loose to my pleasant idols, for soon I must bid them good-bye. This very morning, reading in Epictetus, I found a word for myself."

He rose and fetched a book from the table.

"Here is what the Enchiridion says. I will roughly translate the passage. Listen, Mr Dott. 'As on a voyage, when your ship has moored off-shore, if you go on land to get fresh water, you may pick up as an extra on your way a small mussel or a little fish; but you have to keep your attention fixed on the ship and turn round frequently for fear lest the captain should call. So it is also in life. If there is given you, instead of a little fish or a small mussel, a little wife or a small child, there is no harm in it. But if the captain calls, give up all that and run to the ship without even turning to look back. And if you are an old man, never even get far away from the ship, for fear that when he calls you may be missing.' That is a word in season for me. I have no wife and child, and my little fish and small mussel are my rod and my books. But I must sit loose to them, for my call will not be long in coming."

An hour later the housekeeper looked in. "It's a braw nicht now and a fine mune. Haste and get your nightcap, sir, for it's near time for your bed."

"Marget must be obeyed," said the minister, and, having clapped an ancient hat on his head, he led his guest out of the back-door to the shelf of garden above the Yonder. After the rain the stream was loud, but the wind had sunk, and there was no other sound but an occasional owl and the soft rustle of homing beasts. On the other bank the trees ceased at the gorge's edge, and the bare breast of a hill rose to the pale sky. It was the colour of ripe corn in the moonlight and dotted with the white forms of sheep.

The old man filled his lungs with the soft air.

"That is a sight I love," he said. "The sheep look like white tombstones in some ancient graveyard of the gods."

Mr Dott did not love it. The peace of the minister's study had gone from him, and he knew again the curious disquiet that he had felt at the sight of Hungrygrain. It was not the loneliness but the secrecy which oppressed him, an unpleasing sense of anticipation.

"What's that moving among the sheep?" he asked sharply.

Something was making the animals scatter. Something stirred at the far side of the Yonder. Mr Dott waited tensely, for he realised that whatever it was it was coming towards them. He glanced back to the house where the open door made an oblong of light. Mr Blackstocks was quoting Greek, but he did not listen, for his eyes were strained upon the near lip of the ravine.

Suddenly a figure appeared on it and stumbled towards them. Mr Dott caught the minister's arm and would have drawn him towards the house, till he saw that there was no menace in the figure. It was that of a young man, whose clothes were dripping wet and much disordered and whose face was white and weary. Blood from a wound on his forehead was blinding his eyes.

Chapter 7 In Which a Baronet is Discomposed

The young man's face was ghastly in the light of the moon. He clutched at Mr Dott, who retreated in alarm, but who came forward when he realised the truth. This was a sick man with no purpose of hostility; his clothes were stained, and one coat-sleeve was torn, but they had once been fashionable; his cravat was wildly disordered, but it was of fine cambric; his countenance was dirty and blood-smeared, but the features showed breeding. Mr Dott was reassured.

"Hold up, sir," he said, giving him his arm. Then to the minister, "We must get him inbye, for this garden is no place for a dwam. Your study sofa is the bit for him."

He was a tall youth and leaned heavily on his small companion. They were met in the passage by the housekeeper, who exclaimed shrilly, "Is't the minister? Is't himsel'? Whae in the world? … Tuts, gie me a haud o' him. The chiel's sick, and, gudesakes, he's gotten an unco clour on the heid… . Losh, he's awa' wi' it." Sure enough the young man fainted and was carried by sturdy female arms to the lamplit study.

The minister stood by twittering gently, while the housekeeper laid the youth on the sofa, undid his neckcloth, unstrapped his pantaloons, and drew off his boots. She fetched a basin of hot water and bathed his brow, felt his pulse in the most professional manner, and shook a disapproving head.

"Nae wound to speak o'," she announced. "Just a wheen scarts on the scalp as if a gled had pikit at him. But the lad's sair forfochen—fair foundered. There's been ill work somewhere this night."

"A drop of brandy is what he needs," said Mr Dott.

"And whaur am I to get brandy, think ye? There's no the savour o't in this house. There's whisky in plenty, but whisky's nae guid, for it wad only fever him."

There was something ominous about the dead-white face, and the wet hair streaked over the still bleeding forehead. The sick man gave no appearance of coming to himself, but lay with his head limp and his pale lips open, and his breath seemed to be faint and difficult.

"We must get a doctor," said Mr Dott.

"There's nae doctor nearer than Yondermouth, and he wadna be muckle use if ye got him. He's yin that's no often sober. But there's nae surgeon's wark needit. Thae wounds are just scarts and scrapes and the bleedin' is near stoppit. I've skill enough o' medicine to ken that. If I could get a cup o' brandy and het milk down his throat, I'se warrant he'd sleep like a bairn and be a weel man in the mornin'."

"Then brandy must be found," said Mr Dott. "Is there no Christian house nearby where we could beg a bottle?"

"Nane but Hungrygrain, and he'd be a bauld man that went seekin' favours at yon door."

"But there is an inn. I've heard tell of an inn."

The housekeeper raised her head.

"Ay, there's an inn. It's a queer kind o' hostel, but ye'd maybe get what ye sought."

"Is it near?"

"Ayont the water. No above a mile. Ye'd hae to cross the plank brig at Ritterford."

"Then I'm off to the inn. There's a grand moon to light me, if you'll set me on the road."

"Ye canna miss it. There's a path doun this side o' the Yonder till ye come to the brig, and ayont it there's the inn on the tap o' the brae. Ye'll hae to speak the landlord fair, sir, for he's a thrawn body. I've kenned better men than Purdey, but I've kenned waur. Haste ye, for there's nae time to loss. I'll get the puir lad out o' his clothes and inside one o' the minister's nightgowns, and into the spare bed. See, he's comin' to… . But I daurna let him sleep till he has gotten his cordial."

The figure on the sofa stirred, its eyes opened, and a strong shudder overtook it. As Mr Dott set out on his errand it seemed to be trying to speak.

 

Sir Turnour Wyse did not turn his chaise up the hill track which Mr Dott had followed. His goal was the inn, and he had been advised in Berwick to cross the Yonder by what was known as the Roman Brig, and then to bend right through a firwood, to cross a strip of moor, to traverse the village of Yonder, and so find the inn a mile beyond on the hill above the stream. The directions had been given him with curious covert looks, which Sir Turnour had remarked but heeded little. He felt himself to be too far north for the manners of civilisation.

The road, once he had left the highway, proved to be vile in the extreme, and the steady downpour of rain which had begun did not add to its cheerfulness. He buttoned the high collar of his dreadnought, but the deluge trickled down his neck, and made great pools on his leather driving apron. Sir Turnour was not commonly sensitive to landscape or weather, but this place struck him as wholly abominable. The ragged fir trees looked like gibbets. When he emerged on the moor he was met by such a blast of wind and water that he could scarcely see the track, and his galloways stumbled among ruts and pot-holes. The clachan, through which he presently passed, was sodden, shabby and tumble-down, like a city slum transported to a sour upland. There was no sign of life in its street, not even a wandering dog, but he was conscious of unfriendly eyes watching him from behind dirty windows.

Sir Turnour, who that morning had been an easy master of his world, began to feel at a disadvantage, and the novel sensation affected his temper. He had come north on an errand which bored him, but which he could not shirk. No man had ever insulted him with impunity, and at whatever trouble to himself he must bring this young whipper-snapper to instant account. It was not his reputation that moved him, for that he believed to be impregnable: it was his own self-respect. He could not be comfortable in his mind while one walked unpunished who had questioned his breeding or his courage… . But the enterprise, which had hitherto worn the guise of a majestic punitive expedition, was now losing its dignity. He had hoped to find Belses in his own home and to bring him to book with all the decencies of good society. He had learned by secret channels that he had gone to his mistress's Northumbrian home, and that had seemed a not unfitting venue for a settlement. But to seek him in this howling wilderness was another matter. What code of manners could obtain in such a desert? His purpose was to meet one of his own class in the environment of that class, and not to dig out a wretched fugitive like a fox from a hole. He felt that his grand, rock-like self-sufficiency, his complete competence in life, was being imperilled. He might even be in danger of becoming ridiculous. It was an irritated and discomposed baronet that pulled up at the inn.

The place was in the last degree forbidding. It may once have been the mansion of a small laird, for its high-pitched roof and crow-step gables seemed ancient, there was a little courtyard before it, and a ruinous dovecot crowned the slope behind it. But its visage was inhospitable as seen in the driving rain. The small casements were uncurtained, there was no sign above the door, and the door did not stand wide, as a good inn-door should, to welcome the traveller. The forecourt was dirty and cumbered with rubbish, and there was at least one broken pane in each window. One detail alone was satisfactory. Flanking the house were roomy stables, which seemed to be well-cared for, and from which came the stirring of horses. A place could not be wholly comfortless where horseflesh was respected.

The first fury of the rain had ceased, and there was a break in the mist which, from the high vantage-ground of the inn, opened the upper valley. The tree-filled gorge of the stream gave place to a bare glen flanked by hills which to Sir Turnour's lowland eyes seemed monstrous precipices. In the middle distance a house was apparent, a gaunt rambling erection set among starveling evergreens and ill-nourished firs. A gleam of sun caught its walls, but gave them no cheerfulness, and the end of a broken rainbow on the hillside gave it no colour. The place was ugly as a brickyard and cold as a tomb, and it had a character, too, which Sir Turnour was conscious of but could not define. It was ominous, and stared at him with malign eyes; on that he was clear enough, for he was accustomed to trust his intuitions and back his fancy.

The water from a gutter gathered in the eaves above the inn door and descended thence in a steady cascade, so that anyone entering ran the risk of a wetting. So Sir Turnour sat in his chaise and shouted for the landlord.

At first there was no answer. There was a fresh stamping of hooves from the stables, and what sounded like the voice of an angry man. A cow routed in some outhouse, and a clatter of pails was heard in the direction of the steading. But the weatherworn door behind its curtain of water did not open.

Again and yet again Sir Turnour shouted, and each time his voice became angrier. He was just about to descend, with his whip ready for action, when a voice spoke behind him. Someone had come up from the direction of the stream.

It was a big man, who wore corduroy breeches and a homespun coat with huge pockets. Thick blue worsted stockings enveloped his enormous calves and bulged over his stout country shoes. His rounded shoulders and the downward thrust of his shaggy head gave him the air of a dangerous bull.

"What's the steer, mannie?" he asked.

Sir Turnour did not understand the question, but realised that it was not friendly.

"Are there no men about this god-forsaken hole?" he thundered.

"There's me."

"Are you the innkeeper?"

"Ye've said it."

"Then what the devil do you mean by not attending to your duties? I want a stable for my horse, and rooms and fire, and food for myself and my servant. Look sharp about it." He flung back his driving apron, and descended from the chaise.

The man did not move.

"Ye can get back into your coachie, and turn your beasts' heads, and return the road ye came. There's no place for ye here."

Sir Turnour was at his ease again. Here was a surly ruffian to be brought to heel, and that was a task with which he was familiar. He divested himself of his dreadnought and his gloves, and handed them to his servant, who was standing at the galloways' heads. Then he strolled round the chaise and confronted the innkeeper.

The latter had menace in every line of him. He advanced a step with his head thrust forward and his long arms loose for defence or attack. But when he raised his eyes and saw the other clearly, the resolution seemed to go out of his air. For what he saw was no fleshy, dandified traveller, as he had judged from the voice and the figure as it had appeared on the box seat. Sir Turnour stood on his toes as lightly as a runner, his strong clenched hands white at the knuckles, his poise easy but as charged with swift power as a thundercloud is charged with fire. The innkeeper marked the square shoulders, the corded muscles of the shapely neck, the slim flanks—above all, he marked the vigilant and scornful eye. He was himself a noted wrestler, but he knew that he could not give this man a fall, for he would never get to grips with him. The other would dance round him on those light feet, and an arm like a flail would smite him into unconsciousness. He was a bold man but no fool, and he recognised the trained fighter, no genteel amateur, but one bred in a tough school. So he surrendered at discretion and touched a damp forelock.

"No offence," he grunted. "Ye take up a man too short, sir. What's your honour's will."

Sir Turnour smiled.

"Jarvis," he cried to his servant. "Take my baggage indoors. Kick open that door, if it is locked." Then to the innkeeper. "My will? That you should be a little more active in your public duties, friend. I want rooms, fire and food, and civility—civility observe, for I am particular on that point. Quick with you, for your accursed sky is beginning to drip again."

The innkeeper showed a surprising activity. He was at the door before Jarvis could assault it, opened it with a clumsy bow, and himself carried in the larger of Sir Turnour's two valises. The travellers found themselves in a stone-flagged hall which smelt half of stable and half of taproom. Tables and settles were littered with crops, rusty and broken spurs, hawks' jesses, medicines for hawks, hounds and horses, powder-flasks, shot-pouches and a miscellany of other litter. The landlord led them up an oaken stair, with many broken treads, to an upper hall which was chiefly remarkable for possessing a huge rug of woven rushes into which the feet sank. He flung open a door.

"There's your parlour, my denty sir, and ayont it lies your bedchamber. Your servant will have to bed in the garret. I'll get a fire going in a jiffy, but it's a dry house, this o' mine, and the roof's tight, and it's no ill to warm. Meat ye'll want. What time will ye be pleased to dine?"

"Your cursed roads have given me a twist. Let us say six o'clock, sharp to the minute. What can you give me?"

He listened gravely to the landlord's inventory of his larder, for he was one that took his meals seriously. "Faith, we shall not do so dustily. A grilled salmon steak, a cut of hill mutton, and a welsh rarebit—I have dined more scurvily in my day. Claret, no. I have no stomach for your north-country claret. If your ale is sound I will have a tankard of it, and a bottle of your best port for the good of the house. But first I must have a message sent to the house of Hungrygrain. The place is close at hand, I think?"

At the mention of Hungrygrain the landlord, who had drifted into a complaisance which was almost servility, bristled like a terrier.

"What do ye want with Hungrygrain?" he asked surlily.

"What the devil is your business what I want with Hungrygrain? Civility, my friend." Sir Turnour's eyes had a frosty gleam in them. "You will take a message to Squire Cranmer—that, I think, is the name—and you will say that—"

"I will take no message. No message will gang out of this place the day."

"Oho! So that is the way the wind's set! Listen, my man. You will take, or procure the taking of, my message, and that instantly. If you do not, I shall take it myself. But in that event I shall first of all have had the felicity to thrash you soundly and to fling you down these steep stairs of yours. Make your choice, friend. I am stiff with sitting in my chaise and I should not be averse to a little exercise."

Once again the two men measured each other with their eyes, and once again the landlord's conclusion was pessimistic about his chances.

"What's your errand?" he growled.

"You will make my compliments to Squire Cranmer—the compliments of Sir Turnour Wyse, Baronet, of Wood Rising Hall in the county of Norfolk, and of White's Club—you will present my carte de visite—and you will inform him that I propose to do myself the honour of waiting upon him tomorrow morning at ten o'clock. You will add that, as the matter is somewhat private, I would beg of him to say nothing of it, and not to mention my name till after our meeting. Do you follow?"

"I follow. What if the Squire will not see ye?"

"Now, what do you know of the courtesies due between gentlemen? You take too much upon you, my man." Sir Turnour extracted a slip of pasteboard from an ivory case, and placed it in an envelope which he took from his valise.

"See that the rain does not make it pulp," he said. "Off with you or send your trustiest man. Let me have an answer by six, and the dinner you have promised me, and we shall yet be good friends… . God, man, what is the trouble? The Squire is your master, and a good one by all I hear, but you seem as shy of approaching him as if he were the Devil with his tongs! Did you never take a message before from one gentleman to another?"

The landlord departed, a slovenly maid appeared with a pailful of red peats and another of birch billets; the valet Jarvis, who had been busy in the bed-chamber, assisted Sir Turnour to his toilet before the fire. His boots were drawn off, and his legs adorned with fine silk stockings, and a pair of handsome monogrammed velvet slippers. He exchanged his coat for a negligé jacket of a loud-patterned tweed, and a quilted silk dressing-gown. Water was boiled somewhere downstairs, and a basin provided wherein Sir Turnour delicately washed his hands and face. Then he lay back in a much-rubbed leather armchair, trimmed his nails with a pen-knife, and proposed to enjoy a siesta before dinner.

But, though he was a little stiff and the fire was gracious after the stormy out-of-doors, Sir Turnour did not doze. Instead he indulged in day-dreams. The shining form of Miss Kirsty Evandale tripped through the corridors of his fancy. He had never had the name of a woman-fancier—more stirring occupations had filled his time. On the whole women had bored him with their airs and graces, their extravagant demands, their exigent charms. He did not even greatly admire the female form—too full of meaningless curves and cushions, too bottle-shouldered and heavy-hipped—a well-made man seemed to him a far finer creation of God. He could talk to them, banter them, take his pleasure with them, but none had ever touched his heart. But the girl that morning—she differed from any other woman he had ever known! She walked like a free creature, she was ripe and vital and yet fresh as a spring flower, a dainty being yet wholesome as a blood-horse, and she had the most darling laughing eyes! Sir Turnour found himself moved to poetry, and strove to dig Latin tags out of his Harrow memories.

Suddenly his dream was broken. The door had opened and a stranger had entered.

Sir Turnour saw a tall man, booted and spurred and much splashed with mire, who brought into the warm room the tang of sharp weather. His shoulders were a little bent as if he were much in the saddle, and his hair, like Sir Turnour's, was cut as short as a groom's. But his dress, though plain, was not rustic, and he bore himself with dignity and assurance. His face was a fine oval, a little heavy perhaps at the chin; he had a small mouth and full lips, which were parted as if he were perpetually on the brink of a smile. But the notable feature was his pallor, a dead white which accentuated the darkness of his hair and eyes. It was a surprising face, for it had a beauty rare in his sex, the delicacy of a woman combined with a most masculine authority.

"Childe Harold," thought Sir Turnour, as he hove himself out of his chair. "Or his creator?" He had stripped the young Lord Byron of many a guinea at the Cocoa Tree.

The two men bowed, and the new-comer held out his hand.

"Sir Turnour Wyse?" he said. "I am honoured to make your acquaintance, sir. Your fame has travelled even to these moorland solitudes. Your message was delivered to me, and I hastened to wait upon you to receive your commands. Would to heaven I could offer you the hospitality of Hungrygrain, but alas, at the moment my household is in confusion and no fit lodging for a gentleman." He shrugged his shoulders as if to imply a host of petty disasters needless to recount. "In what way can I serve you, sir?"

"I am deeply obliged, Mr Cranmer. My errand is simple and should be short. I desire an interview on a strictly private matter with one whom I believe to be at present your guest. But since the affair has a certain unpleasantness, I thought it common courtesy first of all to acquaint you with my purpose and to desire your assent to it."

Mr Cranmer looked puzzled.

"A guest? Hungrygrain has few guests."

"I will be explicit. The gentleman I seek is my lord Belses."

The other frowned and seemed to meditate. Then the nascent smile on his lips broadened into a laugh.

"Belses! The Snowdoun hopeful! My dear sir, you have come on a curious errand. Now I think of it I have heard some tale of a quarrel between you and his callow lordship—I returned only the other day from town—it was common gossip in the clubs. But what whim possessed you to think that you would find the cub here?"

"I had information in Scotland that he was at your house." Sir Turnour was trying to decide just how much he disliked this dark Adonis.

Mr Cranmer bent his brows so that they made a straight line beneath his pale forehead.

"Sir Turnour," he said, "we are two men of the world and can speak frankly. You have heard rumours of some connection between this Lord Belses and my family? I will not particularise, for the topic, as you will understand, is painful to me. But I ask you, is it likely that I would receive in my house one to whom such gossip attaches? Do I look like a man who would tamely consent to be cuckolded under his own roof-tree?"

Mr Cranmer drew himself up, and his pose was that of indignant virtue, a chivalrous and noble wrath. Sir Turnour had seen just that same pose in admired actors on the London stage. But all the time there was that lurking smile at his lips. He realised that he disliked him exceedingly.

"You can assure me that Lord Belses is not at Hungrygrain?"

"After what I have said another man might take your question as an insult, but I can make allowance for your natural irritation. You have been shamelessly misled, Sir Turnour. Lord Belses is not now in my house and never has been. Were he in my power, I should be the first to deliver him to you for just punishment… . That is my answer, and I rejoice that it will save you a longer stay in these poor quarters in this doleful weather."

He held out his hand. Sir Turnour took it ungraciously, but did not forget his manners.

"I am about to dine," he said. "Will you join me?"

"I thank you, but I have already dined—at our unfashionable Northumbrian hour. I bid you good-day, Sir Turnour, and I wish you speedily better luck in your mission."

A minute later there was the sound of departing hooves on the cobbles of the inn yard. Sir Turnour did not resume his armchair, for he was profoundly discomposed. His information about Belses had come to him from a sure source, he had implicitly believed it, and had looked forward to bringing a tiresome affair to a proper close. But now he must resume his quest—after a snubbing. For this damned play-actor had snubbed him, had taken a high line with him, had proved him deficient in the finer feelings of a gentleman… . What had he heard about Cranmer? A complaisant husband. A bumpkin whose heart was in some provincial hunt. Had there not been a story, too, of heavy drinking? Yet the man's appearance had not suggested these things. He looked active, shrewd, formidable. He had the air of one accustomed to good society. His pallor could scarcely come from a disordered liver, for his physique was vigorous, a point on which the baronet was no small authority.

Dinner was served, but Sir Turnour did scant justice to the meal. His appetite had mysteriously gone, and even the excellent port did not improve his spirits. The memory rankled of an interview in which he felt that he had shown at some disadvantage… . This Cranmer, could he trust him? Was he lying? But why should he lie? He could have no reason to protect Belses… . The one thing clear in his mind was that he detested Cranmer as vigorously as he had ever detested a fellow mortal, the more vigorously because he had no just cause for his dislike. Sir Turnour was a good-humoured man, and a hatred so irrational and intense made him uncomfortable.

The table was cleared, and he sat sipping his port in the armchair by the fire. His confused thoughts and the heat of the lamplit, shuttered room presently made him drowsy, and he thought of ringing for Jarvis to put him to bed.

Then came a small knock at the door. It opened to admit the hesitating form of a little man in a great-coat, a man with a nutcracker jaw and prominent goggle eyes.

Chapter 8 In Which the Hunter Meets the Hunted

Sir Turnour stared at the singular figure which was now inside the room and busy with apologetic shuffles and bows. He seemed to be a small man of the professional class, a country doctor maybe, for sober black apparel was revealed under the flapping great-coat.

"Your pardon, sir," said the figure. "I'm sure I beg your pardon for intruding on you. But I'm seeking the landlord, and this hostel is as short of folk as a kirk on Monday."

Sir Turnour did not rise from his chair. He had no mind to have his private chamber treated as a taproom.

"I know nothing of the landlord's whereabouts," he said coldly. "I have the honour to wish you good night, sir."

"But I cannot find him," the little man wailed. "No, nor a Jock or Jenny to do my business. The place is as deserted as the grave. And find somebody I must, for I cannot wait."

Sir Turnour grew cross. "What concern have I with your business? What do you want?"

"Brandy," was the answer.

"Confound your impudence. Do you take me for a drawer?"

"No, no, your honour." The little man shrunk back as if he feared that the formidable presence in the chair would do him a mischief. "I was just seeking help from a fellow-Christian. The brandy is not for myself, but for a young gentleman that has gotten a sore clout on the head and now lies in a dwam."

"Where is he?" In spite of himself Sir Turnour's interest was awakened.

"He's bedded at the manse."

"The what?"

"The manse. The minister's house. They have a manse here, though it's not Scotland. And the wife there, who seems to have some skill of medicine, says the lad must have a cordial if he is to sleep off his weakness."

A fantastic suspicion entered Sir Turnour's mind.

"Who is this young man? Describe him."

Mr Dott came a step farther into the room as he saw the baronet's severity relax.

"That's just what we don't know. He came out of the wood an hour syne stottering like a palsied man, and all bloody about the forehead, and before we could speir who he was he spins round like a peery and goes off into a dwam. He's just a laddie, your honour, and a gentleman, if I'm any judge of gentility."

"Describe his appearance."

"Very dirty and dishevelled, for he had been among the sheughs and craigs of the burnside. But let me see… . Yellow hair—I think it would be yellow, under the blood and mire. A small whitish face, and a kind of thin gentry nose. He had on him a good stand of clothes, though they had had rough usage, and his hands were as fine as a lassie's.

"His height?"

"About the same as your own, but he's a lath of a lad, and not buirdly like your honour."

Mr Dott was gaining confidence. He had now recognised the man before him as the god from the machine who had intervened on Kitterston hill, and he had resolved to appeal for aid to one who was such a master of circumstance. Sir Turnour's suspicion was growing into a certainty. His dislike of Justin Cranmer had made him violently distrustful of every word that gentleman had spoken. The man had lied to him, and he was not wont to let a lie go unpunished. For the moment he saw in Cranmer a more fitting object of his wrath than the youth who had been the purpose of his journey.

But Sir Turnour's face was schooled to impassivity, and Mr Dott read in it none of these changing emotions. He saw in it only reflection, and it gave him hope.

"I have already seen your honour twice this day," he said. "I was in the Mail when it coupit on Kitterston hill, and your honour came biding up like Jehu. And you passed me on the road about midday when yon ne'er-do-well from the King's Arms was driving me here. It's a sore time of night to disturb a gentleman, but if you could find it in your heart to do a Christian act by the poor lad … help me to get some brandy in this house … or maybe—"

Sir Turnour was on his feet, shouting for his servant, who appeared at once from the bedroom.

"Where is this manse, or whatever you call it?"

"Oh, just a step—less than a mile—a wee bit ayont the burn."

"My boots," he told his valet. "And get me the flask of eau-de-vie from my dressing-case. I am going out for an hour. See that the fire is kept bright, and have a glass of punch ready for my return… . I have not the favour of your name, Sir. Dott? Well, Mr Dott, I will accompany you to the parsonage, and have a look at the sick man. I may know something about him. And since broken heads are going in these parts, we will take precautions."

When he had been assisted into his boots, Sir Turnour buckled under his coat a brace of pistols.

There was little talk between the two as they threaded a track through the dene much clogged with tree-roots. The baronet was occupied in nursing his wrath against Justin Cranmer, his dislike of whom was fast growing to a passion. He had never felt in this way towards Belses, whom he had considered a puppy that must taste the whip, but otherwise a mere unpleasing accident like the toothache. But Cranmer was grown man and formidable man; no mistake about that, for he had the wary eye of the duellist and the face of one not accustomed to refusal. He had been polite but arrogant, that confounded hedge-squire. Sir Turnour had longed at the time to fasten some quarrel on him, and if he had been lied to, here was ample cause for quarrel. Also the track was infernal. Mr Dott in stout high-lows, well nailed by the Waucht cobbler, made good going, but Sir Turnour's smooth-soled riding boots were perpetually slipping on the sodden earth.

At the manse door they were met by the house-keeper.

"Ha'e ye brocht the brandy?" she demanded of Mr Dott.

"Aye, and I've brought a gentleman to give us a hand."

The woman cast one look at Sir Turnour's massive figure in the moonlight, and then bobbed a curtsey. She recognised someone of a type not often seen in Yonderdale.

"He's come to himsel'," she whispered. "The minister's wi' him. He's snug in the best bed, and I hae the milk for his cordial on the boil. Whaur's the brandy?"

Sir Turnour drew from the pocket of his greatcoat a silver flask. "It is eau-de-vie I'll warrant," he said, "such as rarely visits Northumberland. Has the sick man spoken and told who he is?"

"No yet. He has gotten his speech but nae freedom wi't. He cried out something about an angel—Gabriel, I think it was—and then he seemed to be feared for what he had said. But his een are gettin' mair world-like, and the minister is guidin' him back to sense. I heard the crack o' the twae through the door. Yince he has had his cordial he'll be a new man."

"Will you lead me to him at once, my good woman?"

"When I've gotten his draught prepared, and that'll no be a minute. Bide ye here, sir."

The housekeeper retreated into her tiny kitchen, and a few moments later appeared with a steaming posset-cup which sent forth an agreeable odour of good brandy. She led the way up the steep staircase and opened a bedroom door. There was a sound of talk coming through the door, which ceased when it opened.

Sir Turnour and Mr Dott, following close on her heels, saw a little square room almost filled by a great uncurtained four-poster. Beside it sat the minister, and four candles guttered in the draught of the open window. Their light showed a young man in a flannel nightgown, whose face was paler than the bleached linen of the pillowslips. His forehead was bandaged and surmounted by an incongruous red night-cap. At first his figure was blocked by the housekeeper, who was feeding him from the posset-cup. When he had drained it he lay back again upon his pillow, and a faint colour returned to his cheeks.

Sir Turnour at the bottom of the bed was gazing earnestly at the face, which was now a little in dusk, since the table with the candles had been pushed aside. Doubt, recognition, and doubt again were in the baronet's eyes. But the sick man put an end to all uncertainty. The baronet stood out clear in the candlelight, and the patient became suddenly conscious of his gaze. He pulled himself up in bed with such vigour as to displace his night-cap and set the candles rocking.

"Wyse, by all that's lucky!" he cried. "Speak, man. Are you Wyse, or am I raving mad?"

"My name is Turnour Wyse," was the answer. "We shall have something to say to each other, my lord, when you are fit for speech."

The young man let his head drop back, and his newly revealed hair was, as Mr Dott had said, as yellow as a girl's. He laughed, but not pleasantly; his laugh had discomfort in it, and fear, and a sharp anxiety.

"Have you come here for my sake?" he asked.

Sir Turnour bowed.

"I have requested satisfaction for an insult," he said, "and that satisfaction has been withheld. I am not in the habit of letting such requests go unanswered. So since you chose to seclude yourself from me, I have been forced to come in search of you."

He spoke firmly, and a little pompously, for these were the words with which he had long proposed to open this particular conversation. But to his surprise, and indeed to his alarm, he felt, as he spoke, something of a fool. This pallid youth in the flannel nightgown seemed a poor quarry for so noted a hunter. He had set out to draw a badger and found a rabbit, and he discovered that he had no fury against the rabbit. Belses, trim and handsome and point-devise, with a coterie of affected youths behind him, had annoyed him extremely; but had he been the same being as this rag of a boy?

The housekeeper intervened.

"Ye maun let him sleep, sir. The posset will dae him nae guid if ye keep him conversin'."

But the lad in the bed seemed to have got a new vigour which could not be due only to the milk and brandy. He raised himself on the pillows, and brought a slim boyish arm outside the blankets.

"I have that to say to this gentleman which cannot wait… . Sir Turnour, will you believe me when I tell you that I did not hide myself from you? I was not my own master. My family intervened… . When I could free myself I found an urgent duty laid on me, a matter of life and death. I would beg of you to let our affair lie over till my road is clear. Be assured that when the time comes I will give you all the satisfaction you desire."

"A matter of honour does not permit of delay," was the answer, very stiffly spoken.

"Then, if you refuse postponement, I must take the other way. You shall have your apology, as grovelling as you please. I will eat humble pie."

Sir Turnour was scandalised. This rabbit was even poorer game than he had thought. He shrugged his fine shoulders, and on his comely face came an expression of surprised disgust.

"I had thought that I was dealing with a gentleman." he said.

The young man laughed miserably.

"A gentleman! Yes, I fancied myself one, but God knows what the word means! There are some that claim it who most foully profane it." … He stopped, for there was that in the other's face, its confidence and simplicity and large honesty, which switched his thoughts on to a new track. It was as if he was for the first time seeing clearly the man before him.

"Listen to me, sir," he said. "I respect the punctilios of honour and would observe them. But if I am faced with a desperate crisis I will discard these punctilios like an old coat and still claim the title of gentleman… . If I could secure not your forbearance only, but your active help in this crisis, there is no humility to which I would not bow. I would lick your boots, sir, and think I did honourably."

Sir Turnour was in no way mollified. He had heard this kind of talk before, and did not like it; it savoured of poets and Jacobins and creatures of sentiment who had no place in his robust world. But the earnestness of the young man's voice impressed him in spite of himself.

"What is this crisis?" he asked. "I must hear more about it before I answer you."

The young man looked round the room.

"I am among friends, I believe—friends, and one honourable enemy. My host is a servant of God and this woman is a ministering angel. The fourth I do not know," and he looked at Mr Dott, "but he has an honest face. I fling myself upon your mercy. To-night I have been near death, but that is a small affair. There is worse than death in the house of Hungrygrain. There is an incarnate devil, and torture, and despair."

"Large words," said Sir Turnour. "Condescend to explain yourself." But he was not wholly sceptical, for he had a notion that he had recently met the devil referred to.

Colour had come back to the young man's face. He addressed the housekeeper. "I am perishingly hungry, for I have scarcely eaten to-day. Can you give me some bread and cheese?"

The woman expostulated. "Na, na, sir, it's sleep ye need. Ye should hae naething on your stomach but the het milk."

"But I am too hungry to sleep—and too hungry to speak—and speak I must. Already I feel a new man, but an empty one."

Sir Turnour intervened.

"You were struck on the head—how long ago?"

"Four hours, perhaps."

"And since then?"

"I have been chased."

"And you fainted when you came here, and were senseless for half an hour? Your case is plain, sir. You have had a small concussion, which took some hours to affect you. I have suffered the same thing myself in the ring and in the hunting field. Once I went for three days with a concussion on me, pursuing my ordinary life, and then suddenly fainted dead away on the bench at Quarter Sessions, and it was an hour before I came to myself. Food will do you no harm, provided your meal is light."

"There's a mutton ham in the house, Marget," said the minister. "Bring it, and some of your new scones. It's far past my bedtime, but I think I could take a bite myself."

Ten minutes later four pairs of jaws were busy in the little room, for even Sir Turnour had accepted a slice of mutton ham and a glass of ale. Belses, propped up on his pillows, looked wholesome enough except for his anxious eyes.

"Cranmer is at Hungrygrain—and his wife," he said.

"I came here to see her on business," said the aggrieved Mr Dott. "They said she was not here. There's some unholy liars in this glen."

"There is devilry afoot there," Belses went on, "and she is being tortured to make her comply with it. I speak of your Squire." He turned to the minister. "Have you anything to say in his favour?"

The old man shook his head. "I have not spoken to him for years," he said. The housekeeper pursed her lips. "I'll speak nae ill, but I ken nae guid o' him."

"You know nothing of him? No one does. He goes through the world with a mask on his face, which he removes only in this valley. Tell me, Sir Turnour, what repute has Justin Cranmer in your world?"

The baronet shrugged his shoulders. "He has the name of a rustic booby. At Mortimer's they say he is too fond of lifting his elbow."

"I have heard that—that is the repute he wants—but it is a lie, a monstrous lie. The man is cold and temperate and a deep schemer, but what his schemes are I cannot tell… . But I must go back in my tale." The boy pressed a hand on his bandaged forehead as if to clear his recollections.

"I met Cranmer first eighteen months ago in Italy, and for a little we travelled together. He had some kind of business, I do not know what, but he was often absent from his lodgings and he had dealings with a strange medley of people. He was civil and not ill-educated, and he made a great parade of attention to his wife. The lady—but I will not speak of her," he added as he saw Sir Turnour's face harden. "For the moment, I am content to be neutral on the matter. It is enough to say that she has no single quality in common with her husband.

"We parted, and met again in Bruges. There Mr Cranmer's activities were increased, and among the company he kept were some who were not fit associates for his wife. He seemed to cultivate my acquaintance and make public parade of it as if it were some sort of protection. There was one man who was much with him—Aymer was the name he went by there—an evil fellow who stank of a false bonhomie. And there were others who roused my gorge and from whom Mrs Cranmer seemed to shrink. Yet she was deep in her husband's business, whatever it was—they often consulted together—I have seen her head bent beside his over papers. I could make nothing of it, for he is common flawed earthenware at the best, and she—she, by your leave, sir, is saint and angel."

Sir Turnour frowned. "On that point let us keep our neutrality—it is your own word. I would hear more of the husband."

"In London I renewed my acquaintance with the Cranmers at their house in Great George Street. The man was much away from home, and I understood that he was visiting his properties in the north, but when we met he was uncommonly civil and seemed to have the design of throwing me much into the company of his wife. At first I did not actively dislike him. My feeling was rather distrust and lack of comprehension, for I could not reconcile the repute he seemed to cultivate as a bon vivant and simple sportsman with the glimpses I had of the man in undress. In these latter I detected a subtle brain and some mysterious consuming purpose. Also there were moments when his affection for the lady seemed to ring hollow, and I have found her often with the mark of tears on her face and with terror in her eyes. You must understand that she was all kindness and innocence—"

"We will let her innocence be."

"No, sir, but you must hear me on that, for it is most germane to my story. I formed the opinion that, just as he was intent on making a particular public repute for himself, so he was busy making one for his wife. He would twit her with Jacobinical opinions and quote her sayings in company—sometimes jocularly, sometimes ruefully, for he himself posed as a staunch Government man. Sometimes he would carry her with him to the north, and from these visits she would return a pale ghost, like one who has been in a torture-chamber. Or they would visit her own house in Norfolk, to which she professed a deep attachment, but, judging from the effect on her, these journeys were not in the nature of holidays. I was driven to conclude that Mr Cranmer was engaged in affairs in which he forced his wife to take part, and that that part was hateful to her. And I could not think that these affairs were honest."

"You have evidence on that point?"

"None fit for a court of law. Only suspicions. I had enquiries made, but the tracks were well concealed. Twice I have seen in Great George Street the man I knew in Bruges as Aymer—stumbled upon him as it were by an accident, which Cranmer did not regard as fortunate. But I found out one thing. His name in London is not Aymer."

Sir Turnour laughed. "You are clearly no great success as a spy, sir."

The other shook his head mournfully. "I am not. I know little of the underworld of the town, and the thing was too delicate to permit me to call in helpers. But day by day my conviction grew. I was assured that the lady was in deep unhappiness, and that it was her husband's doing. I burned with indignation at the character he was getting her. But I was like a man striving with a feather bed, for there was nothing hard at which I could strike… . Then came certain incidents with which you are familiar. I will cut my story short, for it is only the conclusion that matters. My family laid hold on me with private lettres de cachet, and I was consigned to the family bastille. There word reached me that the Cranmers had gone to Northumberland. My mind was in a fever. I cannot tell why, but I had a fixed belief that with this journey northward some tragedy was approaching its climax, and that the lady was in desperate danger… . I broke from my prison. The house in Great George Street was shuttered, and tenanted only by the old man Cottle, who acted as steward. From him I had confirmation of the journey… . Also I found at my lodgings a letter from Mrs Cranmer."

"She begged you to follow her?" Sir Turnour's tone was cynical.

"She begged me to forget her and never think of her more. It was the completest congé a man ever had. But between the lines I read that her heart was broken and that she was in some deadly peril. From Cottle I had directions for the road, so without an hour's delay I posted north."

"From spy you became Bow Street runner?" Sir Turnour, himself a truthful man, bowed to veracity in another. Cottle had been, at various times, his own informant. "What, in God's name, did you hope to accomplish by rushing blindly upon the seclusion of husband and wife?"

"'Pon my soul, I don't know." There was a flush now on the young man's face. "I was distraught. I could not think. I had no plan. I only knew that I must act or go mad. I rode the north road like Dick Turpin, and left some weary cattle behind me. Three days ago—it was Sunday night—I reached Hungrygrain as the dark was falling, having lost my way in those ultimate moorlands. I was alone, without a servant. The place was so silent that it seemed deserted, but I was aware that my approach had not been unobserved, and that the neighbourhood was full of eyes. And now, sir, I became an actor in an extravagant play—God send it be not a tragedy!"

Belses stopped and again put his hand to his forehead. "Let me get the stages clear, for it still seems a sort of whirligig… . I was admitted after a long parley by a shaggy serving-man who looked to be apter at cutting throats than at waiting table. The house was bare and in confusion, as if its occupants were about to start on a journey. I asked for the master, and had to kick my heels for an hour in an ill-lit chamber as cold as a tomb. By and by Cranmer came to me, and he was no longer the suave gentleman I had known. His face was black with suspicion and his tone was a menace. Why in hell had I come uninvited, poking my nose into another's affairs? I was amazed, for an unexpected visit of one gentleman to another is not commonly construed as a threat, yet that was how Mr Cranmer took my arrival. I felt that I had had good warrant for my forebodings. I made a story of a hasty journey into Scotland, the road missed, and a recollection that he dwelt in the vicinity, but I could see that I was not believed. I enquired for his lady, and was told that she was not there, but had gone to her house in Norfolk. Then I thought he would have put me to the door and left me to find a lodging in the dark. But he seemed to change his mind, though with no access of graciousness. I was bidden stay the night, and conducted by the same bear of a servant to a little room up many cold stone stairs. I had a solitary meal—and was left to my own devices. I found the door locked and myself a prisoner."

Sir Turnour had awakened to a lively interest. He had sat himself on a corner of the bed, and now leaned forward that he might not miss a word.

"In the morning I was given breakfast, but when I bade the man leave the door unlocked he only grinned. He was obeying Squire's orders. He added in a guttural dialect, far coarser than our Scots, that I must bide till Squire came for me. All that day I looked out of a narrow window on the bare green face of a hill. Below was a stream and a path beside it, and some ruinous sheepfolds. People passed—not many—rough countryfolk—and the house with its massive walls was utterly silent. Yet I was conscious that a fierce life was going on in it somewhere and that something was preparing which concerned me most urgently. When my evening meal was brought—like a dog I was given but the two meals a day—I tried to force my way past the servant. But I was no match for him in strength. His great arms plucked me back and set me in a corner like a naughty child.

"By the second morning I was desperate. I professed to be ill, and demanded an interview with the Squire. Cranmer did not come, but instead a tall surly fellow who spoke the King's English and seemed to be something of a doctor. When he saw that my trouble was of the mind rather than of the body, he laughed and turned his back on me. But he knew who I was, for he called me 'my lord.' 'Keep quiet for a day or two,' he said, 'and no harm will come to you. A few nights in Hungrygrain will cool your blood, which in a young man is apt to be hottest in the spring.'

"There was no hope of escape by the door, which was solid as a rock. I turned to the window, and at first I saw no better chance there. It was flush with the wall, and had no ledge; when I craned my neck upward I found that the coping of the roof was at least twenty feet above me. The ground was perhaps thirty feet beneath—no great distance, but I had nothing with which to make a rope, for I was not a story-book hero to fashion cords out of bedclothes with no tool but my teeth and fingers. I had a thought of trying the drop, but the landing seemed hard, and a broken leg I thought would not better my position.

"So the second night came and I was still without hope. The next morning a strange thing happened. In the ground floor, or in the cellar beneath it, there must have been some store-house for fuel, for in the forenoon three country carts arrived laden with peats and proceeded to unload underneath my window. The shovelling of the stuff into the store-house was left for a later day, and in the meantime they merely decanted their loads in a great heap and went away. In that heap I saw my chance, for it made an irregular mound some ten feet high. I had now not more than twenty feet to drop, and something soft to fall on. The weather had changed, and violent flurries of rain swept down the glen, which would be nearly as good a concealment as the dark of night. I waited till the air was thick with drizzle, so that a man could not see a yard, and then ventured. The falling was not as soft as I had hoped, and I jarred every bone, but broke none. I got the peat dust out of my eyes, and started out to reconnoitre.

"My first impulse was to find my horse, or some body's horse, and put many miles, between myself and that accursed dwelling… . And then a doubt struck me. Cranmer had said that his wife was in Norfolk, but he might have lied. I could not leave the place without an effort to make certain, for if his doings there were so sinister that he thought it necessary to make me prisoner, the lady, if she was in Hungrygrain, might be in an evil case. I remembered the tears I had seen in her eyes, and the shadow of terror. I could not leave till I was certain of her absence.

"So in the screen of the rain and mist I crept along the house wall. First I came to a great ruinous tower which I took to be the old peel, and which was certainly not lived in. My passage was difficult, for I had to climb into and out of a cabbage garden which lay beneath the tower. Then I found myself on the other side of the building at what I took to be the front. Rough pasture came up to the walls, but there were signs that once there had been some kind of a pleasance. Then, as ill-luck would have it, the rain storm passed and the sun came out. I dared not go farther, so I dropped down in a tuft of evergreens to wait for the next shower.

"As I sat there, two figures crossed the grass. One was the tall man who had visited me the previous day. He wore a leather cap with the flaps tied down over his ears, and under his arm he carried a gun like a gamekeeper. The other was the man I had known at Bruges as Aymer, and whose name in London had been Vallance. He was bareheaded, dressed roughly in country style, and he had a pen stuck behind his ear. He seemed to have come out of doors for a breath of air in the blink of fine weather. I could not mistake the large mottled face and the thick, grey, tufted eyebrows.

"Then the sky clouded and the rain began more fiercely than ever. Now was my chance, so in the cover of it I approached the house again. I calculated that I must be near the entrance—or one entrance—so I moved with caution. Most of the ground-floor windows were shuttered. The first unshuttered one opened on a kind of gun-room, for it was full of old saddlery and poles for otter hunting, and on the walls were guns and fishing rods. In the next I saw a glint of fire, and, as I raised my head above the sill, the profile of a human face.

"There were several people in the room, but in the thick weather they showed very dim, for the glass of the window was foul, and the fire was only a glow of peats. Then someone called for a light and a lamp was set on the table. I saw Cranmer plain. He was seated in a big armchair with a long pipe in his hand, and a glass of wine at his elbow. There was a decanter on the table, and the others had glasses. One I think was Aymer, but I am not clear, and I did not consider the rest, for my eyes were held by a figure at the back, who sat pen in hand as if waiting for instructions. It was Mrs Cranmer, and if ever a human countenance revealed a soul in torment it was hers. Her eyes had a blindish look as if she were trying to divert her mind from some fear by nursing a hope or a memory. But she was not succeeding. She was on the rack, and at any moment nerve and will might crack in an agony of panic.

"I lay crouched on the ground trying to think. It would be no good to enter the house, for I should only be again a prisoner. I must get away and find succour. But where? And how? Who would believe me? What friends had the lady other than myself? I could think of none, but her helplessness filled me with such fury that I was determined that if need be I would save her alone, though I should have to do murder, and though it cost me my life. My resolution was so white-hot that it made me calm. Not a minute could be wasted, for I had a sense that whatever evil was coming would come soon. I must get away from this glen to some place where Christians dwelt. I knew nothing of the countryside, but I remembered that the Yonder flowed east to the sea, and by the sea there must be towns and civilisation. Being a Scotsman I had the points of the compass in my head, so I turned east and doubled across the grass to the cover of a wood.

"The rain had abated a little, and I could see perhaps fifty yards around me. So, alas, could other people. Suddenly I realised that Cranmer had his sentinels posted, for before I reached the wood a whistle was blown and answered by another, and I saw a man leap out of a clump of evergreens to intercept me. My passion had made me calm, as I have said, and also vigilant. I am light on my feet and a good runner, and I have stalked the red deer with my cousins of Breadalbane; and can hold my own with any ghillie. At that game I was not afraid of a loutish Northumbrian… . But I had not allowed for my ignorance of the ground. I easily gave the slip to my first pursuer, and entered the wood, which was carpeted with blaeberries and young heather. I reached a stream which I crossed by a plank bridge, and was just stopping to get my breath when I almost fell into the arms of a fellow who was running up the left bank. With the enemy also behind me, I was compelled to re-cross the water. The flood was rising and I was all but swept down into an ugly cataract, but I caught a birch root on the far bank and pulled myself up to a rocky shelf, above which I saw the steep lift of the hill.

"It was there that I nearly met my end. For a man was waiting for me, a man with a great ironshod staff. I swerved, and he struck at me—struck to kill, for if I had fallen I should have gone over the cataract. By the mercy of God his blow did not hit me squarely, but sidelong on the edge of the forehead, tearing my scalp and blinding me with blood. But the sting of it steadied me, for it was more sting than shock. I slipped from him, staggered along the shelf till I found open ground, and then breasted the hill. He was a heavy fellow and, shaken though I was, I had the pace of him.

"By that time the darkness had come. I laboured upwards, very sick in the pit of my belly, but when I had rested for a little and got the blood out of my eyes, I had some accession of strength. Near the summit of the hill I found a shelter among rocks, where I lay till the moon rose, for I was afraid of returning blindly on my tracks. After that I had a glimpse of the lie of the valley, and moved downstream, hoping soon to come upon a path. But presently I realised that the blow had been severer than I had thought, for I had a cruel pain in my eyes and began to stumble giddily. It was borne in on me that I must find a shelter, or I would swoon upon the hillside and be taken, for I was certain that Cranmer would have his hounds out after me and beat every covert in the glen… . There was a light beyond the stream which must come from a dwelling, and I decided that I would risk all and make for it and throw myself upon the charity of the householder."

The young man smiled wanly.

"The rest of the tale you know. My instinct was true, for I have found friends. Friends—and one enemy, but all honest folk. I have had food and care, and now I must sleep, but I cannot close my eyes till I have made a plan. Am I safe here for the night? For be sure they will follow me."

The housekeeper answered. "For the night, nae doubt. But after that I daurna say. Squire Cranmer has a lang airm."

The minister shook his head. "This place is as open as an inn parlour, and there is no corner where you could be concealed. Somehow you must be off before dawn and make for Yondermouth, where you will be safe. They will not suspect your presence here for some hours. Beyond that I cannot advise you. You, sir," and he looked towards Sir Turnour, "you are a man of the world, which I am not. Can you offer no counsel to this young man in his perplexity?"

The baronet had recovered his composure which had been momentarily disturbed by Belses' story. He did not disbelieve it, for the voice had rung true, but he distrusted the narrator's interpretation. He would have nothing to do with the whimsies of a romantic hobbledehoy.

"You have lived long in this place," he addressed the minister. "Have you any warrant for thinking the squire a villain?"

"I am loath to suggest evil," was the old man's answer, "when I have no certain knowledge."

"Tut, sir," broke in the housekeeper, who had been strongly moved by Belses' tale. "Ye needna be sae mim-mouthed. Naebody kens muckle o' Squire's works, but a'body kens that he's anither than a gude yin. The fear o' him lies like a cloud on Yonderdale. If ye stood in his road he'd thraw your neck like a hen's."

"Marget may be right," said the old man. "If he has a failing, it perhaps leans in that direction."

"Nevertheless, my lord, I think you are the victim of your own heated fancies." Sir Turnour's hard precise tones fell on the company like a blast of cold air. "You have chosen to idolise this lady, and you have imagined her a martyr to add to her charms. Since you are in love with her you must needs make a rogue of her husband."

"He canna be in love wi' her," the housekeeper protested. "He's a dacent young lad and she's a married woman."

"I do not question your facts, but your reading of them is a fairy-tale. You have offended somehow a boor, and, since he is a tyrant in this outlandish place, he has taken the ancient way of showing his displeasure. My advice to you is to make your best speed homewards, and put this Cranmer family for ever out of your mind. When we meet again in town I shall be ready to receive your apologies on the matter between us—or some better form of satisfaction. Meantime, since I see you are recovered, I shall return to bed… . You," he turned to Mr Dott, "will have the goodness to show me the path to the bridge by which you brought me here."

Sir Turnour rose to go. The boy in the bed made a last appeal.

"You are a gentleman, sir. You believe my word. Can you leave things in this posture? Will you not help me to—to save innocence from wrong?"

"No, my lord, I am too old and too wise to interfere in domestic brawls. For all I care Cranmer may be the death of his wife and swing for it—it is a result I should not deplore. I bid you good night, and you, Mr Parson, and I advise you to bustle this youth out of a neighbourhood which has become unhealthy."

"Do you go too?" Belses cried after the retreating Mr Dott.

"No me. I'm coming back when I've set this gentleman on the road. Some time the morn I've got to see Mrs Cranmer on a small matter of business."

Sir Turnour smiled, not unkindly. "'Pon my honour, you're a well-plucked attorney," he said.

 

But the baronet, as he made his way, when his convoy had left him, up the steep track beyond the stream, was by no means in that mood of sceptical composure which his last words at the manse had suggested. The irritation against Belses, which had been for some days a thorn to his spirit, was now changed to a vigorous distaste for the Hungrygrain household. He disliked the woman from all he had heard of her, one of those emotional hussies who brought poor fools like Belses to grief. And for the husband he had acquired a strong detestation. The man was bully and tyrant, a disgusting fellow who ruled at his pleasure in this filthy solitude. That was perhaps no concern of his, for he was not a censor morum for rustic louts. But he had lied to him, lied grossly and insolently. That was to say, he had tried to bully him, him, Turnour Wyse, for whom the rest of the world had a wholesome respect. Could the thing be permitted to pass unchallenged? He thought not. It was borne in on him that before he left Yonderdale his dignity required that he should have some further speech with the master of Hungrygrain.

Sir Turnour threaded his way among the scrub in a very ugly temper. As he came out into a clearer patch of ground a branch caught his coat and pulled it apart, and three pairs of eyes, watching him with interest from the undergrowth, saw about his waist the belted pistols.

Chapter 9 Tells of a Dark Wood and a Dark Lady

The first lamps were beginning to twinkle in the Yondermouth cottages, and the riding-lights were lit in its little harbour when Nanty and his two companions took the road up the left bank of the Yonder, where in a marshy haugh it had become a tidal water noted for sea-trout. Behind them in the Merry Mouth, Eben Garnock was in conference with Davie Dimmock, the boat-builder, anent the damaged yard; it was his intention later in the night to slip up the coast in the cutter's boat to Hopcraw and prospect that secret haven.

Nanty wore his second-best pantaloons and his frieze gaiters, but in place of coat and waistcoat he had a knitted jersey strangely patterned in greys and browns which Eben had brought from the northern islands. Jock Kinloch was in the fisher's clothes which he had worn that morning at the Kitterston inn, and Bob Muschat, a tawny young giant with arms like a gorilla's, chose to travel barefoot—the soles of his feet, he said, being tougher than any shoe leather.

The cutter had stood well out from the land, and had escaped all but the fringe of the rain which cloaked the hills. Most of the voyage had been in blue weather, with a light wind on the starboard beam, and Nanty, sprawling on a heap of tarpaulins in the bows, had experienced the same lift of the heart that he had got the day before on the Burntisland packet. He dozed a little, but in spite of the night journey he did not crave sleep. The leagues of dancing water around him were a sufficient refreshment. This was very unlike the journey he had planned, a back-breaking coach ride from which he would have stiffly descended for grave conferences with Lord Snowdoun. It was something far better, for he had been whirled into the caprices of a boy's dream. He was not neglecting duty, for he had Lord Mannour's instructions, but he wondered what his colleagues in the Senatus would say if they could see his present quarters and company. Eben was splicing a rope, looking like a patriarch from a lost world, Jock Kinloch was peeling potatoes and singing snatches of dubious songs, and Bob Muschat at the tiller was the eternal seafarer who has not changed since the first hollowed log first adventured on the water. Nanty had the feeling that he had slipped back through a crack in time to a life which he had tried a hundred years ago. It was comforting and familiar and yet desperately exciting. He had a small quiver of fear somewhere in his blood, for his three companions, even Jock, were of a tougher breed than his own. "I've read too many books," he told himself, "and spoken too many idle words. God help me, but I mustn't shame them."

They had their evening meal riding at anchor behind the small breakwater of Yondermouth, and as the dark fell Eben set the three ashore a little way up the Yonder estuary. It was now that there descended upon Nanty an afflatus of which he was half ashamed. When he stretched his legs over the first miles of furzy common he could have sung; when before moonrise the darkness closed in thicker upon them and they all stumbled over ditches and tussocks, he wanted to roar with laughter. The others plodded stolidly on, but he strode with a shepherd's heather-step, and there were moments when he longed to run, so compelling did he feel the vitality in blood and sinew.

They reached a track, a faint marking in the bent, and swung to the left. "The road frae Hopcraw," said Bob, who acted as guide. A mile or two farther and they crossed a highway. "The Alnwick road," said Bob. A little way on the first flush of the moon lit up the sky. Beyond them the lift of the hills was plain, and a dark cleft which was the opening of Yonderdale. The bracken was wet, for they were now within the orbit of the day's rain. "There's been a deluge," said Bob, "and the burns will be up. Yonder can be whiles as dry as the Well Wynd at Pittenweem, and whiles it's a fair ocean and ill to ford. Bide a wee, sir, and let's straighten out our plans."

Eben had had a rough chart of Yonderdale which Nanty and Jock had studied in the afternoon, and Bob, who had more than once prospected the ground, had it clear in his head. It was he who gave the orders.

"The mune will set or three, and by that time we maun be far up the glen. Ye mind where the village lies? We maunna gang near it, for the folk there never gang to their beds, and if a craw flew up the street the hale town wad ken o't. But we maun tak that side of the water, the south side, for the north's ower dangerous, and we maun be at Tam Nickson's afore it's light, for deil a body maun see us enter Tam's hoose."

"Nickson's is our military base," Jock explained. "We can't go ferreting about this glen without a hidy-hole. Nickson's our friend. He came here from Annandale a donkey's years ago, and his skill of sheep is so great that he had been kept on at high wages, though he's not exactly popular in the place. He's a pack-shepherd—you know what that means?—and they say he has a pack of ten-score ewes. He must have done well for himself. He's an old man, isn't he, Bob?"

"Auld as the Three Trees o' Dysart. He'll never see four-score again, but he's a soople body for his years."

"Well, Nickson keeps himself to himself, and, since he is the chief support of the Hungrygrain flocks, the folk leave him alone, as he leaves them alone. There's not much happens in the glen that he doesn't know, but he lives by himself by a burnside, so his house is our natural headquarters. He's a friend of Eben's, and Bob stayed with him when he was here before, and he manages now and then to send us word when there's trouble in the wind. It's likely Nickson's doing that we're here to-day."

"If he hates Hungrygrain, why does he stay on there at his age?" Nanty asked.

"Ower auld to shift," Bob answered. "Besides, he doesna' hate Hungrygrain. He telled me it was the bonniest bit God ever made, but sair defiled by man. He has a terrible ill-will to the squire—some auld bicker—and he's no that fond o' Winfortune, and Hartshorn, and Meek, and the ither birkies. But he delves his yaird and reads his Bible—he's a godly man, Tam—and shapes tup horns into staff-handles, and cannily lets the world gang by—except at clippin's and speanin's, when they tell me he's fiercer than a twa-edged sword."

"Are the Hungrygrain people ill to work with?" Nanty asked.

"Some say the Deil's deid and buried in Kirkcaldy," Bob quoted oracularly. "But he's no in the Lang Toun, and he's no deid. He's live and weel and rangin' the earth, and if there's one bit he's chosen for his special habitation it's just Yonderdale… . We maun haste, sir, for we've nae time to dally. The highroad's no for us, for there's folk on it at a' hours, and there'll be mair the night, if, as Eben thinks, there's some special traffic wi' Hopcraw. When we're past the brig we'll tak a path I ken o' up the burnside. Afore the night's out we may hae to scatter, so we maun be clear about the rondyvoo. Tam Nickson's house afore daylight—at a' costs afore daylight. If ony o' us is late he maun just lie out in the shaw till the morn's night, for it's death and damnation to us if we're seen, besides destruction to Tam himsel'. Are ye clear, sir," this to Nanty, "how ye win to Tam's. It's a mile abune the house of Hungrygrain where a burn comes down frae the north to Yonder—the one house on a' the hillside, cockit up amang rowan trees on a shelf like the poop o' a Hamburg smack. A man's unco' kempeckle gaun up till't, but once he's there he can spy out a' Hungrygrain… . We maun haste if we're to sup Tam's sowens for breakfast."

Bob led them at a round pace across the drove road, which Mr Dott had travelled earlier that day, into the dene of the Yonder. The stream was in spate, but not too high to forbid a passage, which was effected at the narrows between two boulders, where Nanty pleased himself by jumping more cleanly and surely than Jock, and not less well than Bob with his prehensile naked feet. After that progress was slower. Bob's alleged path was a thing of faith rather than of sight. Where the trees were pines and the ground a carpet of needles and young whortleberries the going was good, but when whins intervened or burnt heather or the matted stumps of fallen oaks, and the moon was shut out by thick undergrowth, it was necessary to walk as delicately as Agag. Moreover, Bob was taking no chances. He never turned a corner till he had reconnoitred in advance on his belly. A sound which he could not at once identify sent him flat on his face.

"It wants a lang spoon to sup kale wi' the Deil," he whispered apologetically to Nanty. "I've been here afore, and seen Hungrygrain guardit like Edinbro Castle, and by folk that you never saw unless you went seekin' them. Besides, we're just fornent the inn. There's a brig nearby, and after that we'll tak a slype up the hill, for we maun be high up to pass Hungrygrain policies and come in by the backside o' Tam's house… . Wheesht! What's that?"

All three lay prone among the whortleberries. There was a gap in the trees just ahead where the moon shone, and in that gap was the figure of a man. It was a tall man in a great-coat, and he seemed to be having difficulty in keeping his footing on the slippery path. A branch pulled his coat apart, and a brace of pistols were revealed at his waist.

All three recognised him. Bob's hand went automatically to cover Nanty's mouth, and it was not till the figure had passed out of sight that the latter was permitted to speak.

"It's Wyse," Nanty groaned. "Good God. I may be too late! He is armed… . Can he have met Harry? Or be on his way to meet him?"

"Not at this time of night," said Jock. "Comfort yourself, Nanty, you're still in time. But what in the devil's name takes the man wandering at midnight in a black wood? Where does that path lead to?"

"It runs frae the inn to the Hungrygrain road," said Bob. "It's no muckle o' a road, just a path ower a plank brig… . Wait on, sirs. It's the shortest way frae the manse to the village. The man had maybe some business wi' the minister."

"The minister? What's he like? And what could he want with him?"

"He's a dacent auld body that gangs his ain gait like Tam Nickson and meddles little wi' Hungrygrain… ."

Nanty's anxiety made him take the lead.

"We must follow him," he whispered fiercely. "And one of us must go to the manse and see what is there. Yon proud gentleman does not stroll out by night with pistols at his waist for nothing. You, Bob, must try the manse, for you know the road and you know the minister. Come on, Jock, for there's not a moment to lose. There's light enough to fight by. Any minute my poor Harry may come by his death."

Bob nodded, and with no more ado turned down the path towards the stream, with a final injunction of "Tam Nickson's, mind ye, afore it's light." Nanty seized Jock's arm and dragged him up the steep bank of the dene, where their nailed shoes gripped better than Sir Turnour's riding boots.

"Canny, Nanty, my man," Jock grumbled. "I wish you would practise the logic you teach. Belses is in Hungrygrain House—we know that. Wyse cannot have arrived many hours ago. Is it likely they would have arranged a meeting at midnight several miles away? Be reasonable, man. Yon baronet's a stickler for all the forms, and a tried hand at the game. What about seconds and the other decencies? I hate the fellow like poison, but he's no hedge-murderer."

"God knows what he is. Our business is to follow him, and not take our eyes off him till we know his purpose."

"I've got it," said Jock. "He's staying at the inn and is on his way back after a breath of fresh air. He's a wise man to go armed in a den of thieves like Yonderdale… . But maybe Belses is at the manse? No, it's not possible. What would a spark like him be doing with a country minister? Or he's at the inn? Maybe Cranmer turned him away from his door."

The mention of the manse caused Nanty to halt in his tracks with a momentary thought of following Bob. It was a fortunate impulse, for it prevented him from blundering into a party of four men who had begun to descend the track from the edge of the dene. They were moving fast, with heads down like hounds on a trail. The ground was open, with little cover, and there was only one chance of concealment. Jock darted to the left up the hill, and Nanty, obeying a different instinct, slipped downward to the shelter of a clump of elders.

Things happened fast. Jock was seen, a man shouted, and the four fanned out to cut him off. Out of the tail of his eye Nanty saw this before he reached the elders. Some ancient impulse, born of boyish games of hide-and-seek, made him attempt a diversion. He too shouted and waved his arms; he saw that he was observed, and that the pursuers had turned towards him. He saw nothing more, for he dared not turn his head. Some of the hounds were on his trail, and his sole purpose was to outdistance them. He raced up the stream side, with only his ears to tell him of the pursuit.

Spare living had kept his body lean and hard, and he had always been notably light on his feet. But never in his life had he been in danger from other human beings, and at first his heart fluttered in his throat. He had no doubt about the danger; his instinct told him that these men behind him, whoever they were, were bent on evil. He had broken on purpose into an unhallowed sanctuary and its custodians would not forgive him. At first he choked as he ran, and his fear seemed to clog his breathing… . And then suddenly the suppleness of his limbs gave him confidence. The sounds behind him came no nearer. His stride lengthened, for the ground was firm and open, and he found that he leaped a tributary gully like a deer… . Something else heartened him. He was conscious of being in a new world, a world which he had always revered and dreaded, where his duty was not with books and papers, but with primitive hazards and crude human passions. It was a professor of logic who was thus pitchforked into the primeval, and it lay with him to prove that a scholar could also be a man.

But where was he running? The mischief was that he knew nothing of the ground, and at any moment might land in a cul-de-sac. The dene had begun to narrow ominously and might soon be a chasm. Was that why the pursuit was so sluggish? Was it shepherding him into a fatal corner? He had been running near the water's edge, and now he began to draw farther uphill. In a gap lit by the moon he thought he saw his enemies behind, stumbling and slow but resolute as weasels. The undergrowth was growing thicker and would cripple his speed. At all costs he must find a place less encumbered, or his youth and swiftness would be of no account. Or better still, could he put the hounds at fault?

He was now on a little knuckle of rock well above the stream, and in front it appeared as if crags were beginning to crowd in upon it. There was some sort of path by the water's edge and the pursuit was still on it. They must be confident that that way there lay no escape, that they had him in front of them penned on a single narrow track. Could he increase that confidence? He picked up a stone and flung it far ahead so that it seemed to have been loosened by his feet. He heard it plash in deep water. Twenty yards on he did the same, and then dropped in the fern, looking down upon the waterside path. He was staking all upon his theory of the mind of his pursuers. Suddenly forty feet below him they came into sight, two men running steadily by the stream's edge. They must believe that in a few hundred yards they would have him cornered in some nook of cliff… . He let them pass, crawled upward through the bracken, and made for a patch of light which was the open hill.

There was a broken-down dyke which separated the dene from the moor, and as soon as Nanty had crossed it his spirits rose. He had no fear now, no nervousness; these heavy-footed countrymen could never come up with him; he had the whole world before him and legs that could not tire. The moon was nearing its setting, but the land was still bright, and all Yonderdale was clear below him. He halted for a second to get his bearings. Behind him was a tree-choked glen, with very far away the dimness of seaward plains. In front was the great hollow of the upper Yonder, the hills steep around it as if sliced by a knife, but, from the altitude at which he stood, revealing further round-shouldered tops huddled towards the north. And almost at his feet he made out the demesne of Hungrygrain, with one light burning low in the house, perhaps from an open door.

Nanty prospected his road, for it would be very dark after moonfall. He must make a circuit round the glen head, and come back on the north side to Tam Nickson's cottage—he saw the gash in the hill where it must lie. He must reach it before dawn, and that meant three or four miles in black darkness, but he could not miss it so long as he followed the crest of the hill, for the burn which ran by its door was the only tributary of the Yonder from the north. He was in a mood of high exhilaration, for these uplands, sweet with spring herbs, intoxicated him like that sunlit sea over which he had sailed in the afternoon. He was in a clean world, the world of youth and spring, and his heart shouted to it. He wanted to declaim poetry—

 

"Rumoresque senum severiorum

Omnes unius aestimemus assis… ."

 

What he did was to canter like a colt over the flats of grass and heather which sloped upward before him to the west. Another tumble-down wall checked him, and he dipped into a tiny hollow through which a trickle of cold water slipped among yellow mosses. He drank from the spring and stood up to clear the drops from his eyes, and as he did so he was aware that he was not alone.

Had the pursuit circumvented him? The thing moved, whatever it was. Was it human, or a stray ewe or roebuck? It had seen him and feared him—it was trying to escape. The slope made a patch of darkness in which he could discern movement but not form, but the thing emerged from the patch, stumbled, and came to a sudden standstill, as if its strength had failed it. Then came a sound from it, a small miserable sound of weakness or fear.

Nanty took three steps across the moss and stood beside a recumbent figure. It was a woman, and in the last ebbing of moonlight he saw that she was staring at him with terrified eyes.

"What ails you?" he said, and his voice was gruff in the extremity of his surprise. "Can I help you? How came you here?"

His words wrought a miracle, for it seemed that they were not what she had expected. She rose to her feet; very slim she was, and her head was higher than his shoulder. She peered into his face and saw something there which both comforted and perplexed her, for her voice lost its tension.

"Who are you? Oh, tell me who you are that travels the Green Dod at midnight? You are a stranger? You do not belong to Yonderdale? Your voice is kind."

"I am a stranger," said Nanty. "But a midnight hill is fitter for a man than a woman. It is you that should explain your presence here."

"Alas, I cannot. It is too long and cruel a story. I am in trouble … in danger. By your speech, sir, you are from Scotland, and I am part Scotch. I think you are a gentleman. Let me come with you till we are beyond the hills. I will be no drag on you—"

She started, for a fox barked in a neighbouring cairn, and her movement told Nanty that she had been lately through some extreme terror.

"Where do you wish to go?" he asked.

"Out of Yonderdale," she stammered. "Out of Yonderdale, even if it means out of the world."

"I can escort you to the hills at the head of the glen," said Nanty. "I must beg you to hasten, madam, for I have myself a long road to go."

She obeyed like a docile child. She wore the rough country shoes and stockings of a dairymaid, and round her shoulders was a plaid of checked shepherd's tartan. Nanty observed that she walked like a free woman, not mincing or shuffling, but with firm steps that did not falter as the slope steepened. Once or twice he offered to assist her, but she needed no help, and presently the moon went down, and in the darkness he was aware of her only by the rustle of her movement at his left side.

His mind was in a not unpleasing confusion. In two days he had stepped out of order and routine into a world of preposterous chances. He had been hunted by those who sought to do him a mischief; he was endeavouring to wrest a malign secret from a moorland fortress; he was trying to save a friend from death; and now in the dark of the moon he was tramping the high hills with an unknown lady. That she was no countrywoman he was certain, for her slim body, her voice, her manner of speaking betokened breeding to one who had seen much of it while he lived in Lord Snowdoun's household. She was like—now of whom did she remind him? Incongruously enough it was Harry Belses. She had the same soft intonation, the same slight drawling lisp. The thought of Harry would ordinarily have set his mind off on the tack of his duty, but duty had for the moment been ousted by something more compelling.

Black as the night was, it was not difficult to find the way, for he had his countrymen's instinct for the points of the compass and knew that he must keep due west to the head of the glen. Also he had the slope to guide him, since he was following the edge of a little tableland. But now and then he was uncertain of his course, and when he turned sharply he jostled his companion's shoulder. Once he caught her arm and its softness amazed him, for he had never before laid his hand on a woman.

Presently he was conscious that the steep slopes had bent to the right and that they were turning the uppermost cleugh of Yonder.

"Where do you want to go?" he asked her.

"Beyond the hills. There is a village in the next valley—they call it Grassmoor—I shall reach it in the morning."

"But what will you do there?"

"I will try—oh, I do not know … I need help, and there may be Christians there. I would have tried to reach Yondermouth, but I was too late—they were before me—I was driven up into the hills—"

"Then we should part here, for I am going north."

"Let me stay with you till it is daylight. I am blindish in the dark, and I might go astray, and return the road I came."

Nanty was conscious that she shivered as she spoke, and it could not be with cold, for the air was mild.

It was that darkest moment of the night which precedes the dawn. Suddenly Nanty had a revelation. Part Scotch! Hamilton of Mells! It could be none other. He knew his companion. It was that Delilah who had made a tool of poor Harry. That woman, half spy and half incendiary, who wove her foul plots in these wilds and found cover in a loutish husband. Jock's violent words came to his mind. He was tramping the hills with the high-priestess of all evil.

It was Nanty's turn to shiver. He did not stop to ask why so potent a conspirator should be a fugitive in the domain she ruled. He only knew that he was alone with a mystery of iniquity, and his flesh crept. There at his left hand went in the darkness something darker than Erebus. He had always been shy of women, and, having an acute sense of sin, he had been abashed by any flagrant wickedness. He shrank from this presence at his side as he would have shrunk from a loathly disease. He had the impulse to rush off on a road of his own, leaving the creature to the unclean spirits of the night … Yet her voice was still in his ear, and it had been low and gentle.

On his right hand the black changed to grey, and a thin wave of pale light ran up the sky. Very fast the grey thinned to a delicate web of blue, and the world beneath him sprang into shape. He saw the contours of the hills, though the valley bottom was still dim, and he realised that dawn would be upon him before he reached Tam Nickson's cottage.

"I must be off," he cried, and was just starting to cover the last mile at a run, when he saw that the morning had also revealed his companion. He stopped short, for what he looked at was not the Messalina of his fancies, but a pale girl with most tragic and beseeching eyes.