'You are leaving us - so soon.' Mrs Dewar darted an anxious look at Miss Crowe. 'That is such a pity. We are just getting to know you, isn't that so, miss?'
Her beaming smile in that lady's direction was rewarded by a polite but chilly inclination of the head enough to convince anyone less determined than Mrs Dewar that her romantic intentions were doomed to dismal failure.
‘I’m sorry you must go, sir. I am sure you and this young lady would find much in common...'
Faro avoided Miss Crowe's eyes as he took his departure with more haste than good manners dictated, Mrs Dewar's well-meaning compliments soaring after him.
He had been through this ritual so many times, with so many mothers with daughters.
As he walked briskly up the road, he was a little astonished that a man past forty should still be a potential victim of the matchmaker's art. Would it never end, he thought? Would they never give up and accept him for what he was, a widower with growing daughters?
Having decided to put his notes into Yarrow's hands personally, he planned to enjoy the end of his stay in Elrigg with a pleasant stroll on a warm sunny morning. As he walked happily up the road whistling under his breath he mentally shed 'Mr Faro: Insurance Investigator' and returned to his own identity.
He decided this would be a good opportunity to take another look at the hillfort on the excuse that Vince would want to know all about it. He had another stronger reason: to meet Hector Elrigg once more.
As he reached the pastureland, with the hillfort in sight, his nightmare returned and he approached with extreme caution.
No wild bulls roared down on him, the cattle were grazing nearer to the road than on his last visit, but still safely enclosed behind a sturdy-looking fence.
There was no sign of Hector Elrigg at the excavations and having come this far Faro decided to try his cottage. There was no response but, finding the door partially open, he gazed inside. A fire glowed, the table was set for a perfunctory meal. The atmosphere was elegant, with chairs and tables that would have been equally at home in the Castle; furnishings more opulent than he would have expected from a bachelor archaeologist's estate cottage.
He closed the door, thinking that Hector's good taste would not have gone amiss in Elrigg.
Hurrying back across the pastureland he was sure that the cattle had moved still nearer.
Although they appeared to be peacefully grazing, he also observed that once again all faces had turned in his direction. They were watching him with unnerving stillness and intensity. Quickening his footsteps and resisting the almost unconquerable urge to run, he was thankful to bypass the hillfort and reach the safety of the road.
From beyond the fence, he looked at them in wonder. So little was left of early man's presence, but these beasts, who should rightly have been extinct long ago, continued to thrive, their survival dictated by some secret knowledge of the universe and obedience to the natural laws obliterated by layer upon layer of man's sophistication down the ages.
On the hilltop with the sun behind them, the standing stones looked more than ever like five headless women. What was their secret older than recorded time, what long-forgotten rituals linked them with the hillfort and the wild cattle?
Intrigued by that insoluble mystery and having come this far on a fruitless errand, Faro decided to inspect them more carefully than the advent of the tiresome Miss Crowe had made possible the last time.
Clambering along the margins of the farmer's field with its newly sown crops, he reached the summit of the circle, once more captivated by the views from this vantage point across two countries.
Taking a seat on a large stone, he looked down towards the now distant road. The outlines of the prehistoric fort were more clearly visible from this height, the sunlight casting shadows on the contours which had once sheltered the earliest inhabitants of Elrigg, the nomads who had settled here and given this place its first history.
There was a newer race of nomads now. And he saw a line of brightly coloured caravans trotting down the road; the sound of the horses, the tinkling of the pots and pans, dogs barking and children shouting, echoed through the air. A cheerful sound of bustling humanity, though he doubted whether the gypsies' return would be any more welcome here than it was on the meadows around Edinburgh.
They made careful circuit of the forbidden and dangerous pastureland and headed towards the riverbank where they would make temporary camp.
Far beyond the road twisting away below him, smoke rose into the still air indicating the village of Elrigg, an oasis nestling peacefully among undulating hills, lost in a fold of this wild barbaric land with its blood-soaked history. Beyond the parkland the Castle's towers rose through the trees which hid the drive and the lodge gates.
Shading his eyes, he caught a glimpse of Miss Halliday's cottage and wondered if the twenty-year-old Walter Scott had also been intrigued by the riddle of Elrigg as he walked these roads and touched these stones. It pleased Faro to think that, with his famous novels still in the future, perhaps young Scott had conceived his love of the Borders which was to inspire Marmion and The Bride of Lammermoor in the Hallidays' farmhouse.
From the distant church he heard the sound of bells. Eleven o'clock, and reluctantly he made his way back downhill and, heading in the direction of the inn, he indulged in the pleasant fancy that on this very spot, echoing his own footsteps, his hero had found inspiration or, in the years of his fame, wrestled with some particularly difficult passage of prose...
'Hey - mister...'
His reverie was interrupted by two young lads who erupted from the field and ran towards him waving their fishing rods.
'Mister, mister.
