And then the moon went down.
The wind blew colder as the darkness gathered about her.
“Oh! will the morning never come?” sighed poor Lettice, as on and on she went more slowly now, for her feet were aching and sore. “Is it only the wind that I hear?” she said, pushing back her hair from her ears and standing still for an instant in a gloomy narrow lane into which the flinty high road had gradually dwindled. Then her heart misgave her as a loud gust swept over her head, scattering some dry leaves from the wayside trees, and bringing with it a few large drops of rain.
Dark shadows all round her, a grey stone wall on either side, the wind going and coming in heavy gusts, and sobbing itself out in the old firs. No hat on her head, her feet blistered, and every nerve in her body burning and thrilling, on she went, stumbling at times, almost staggering against the flinty outline of the wall, now the only guide she had to keep her in the path which led she knew not whither. She dared not stop to rest—she knew if once she sat down the roadside she would never rise up again. Her brain was sick and dizzy; she could not think, she scarcely felt, was hardly conscious, indeed, of her own self, her own being, in that windy, drizzling darkness.
And then, somehow, mingled with the wild sighing of the wind there came the baying of a dog. Whence the wind brought it she did not know.
“If I am going farther from it I must still keep on,” she thought to herself, so she staggered and stumbled on, catching her breath as the breeze swept by. “If I keep on and on,” she thought, “the day must dawn some time or other, and then some people must be about, and they’ll find me and help me along to get somewhere.”
Another wild gust of wind swept down, and again sounded the baying of the dog. “Ah, thank God!” sighed poor Lettice, “I’m not wandering away from it, after all.” And this—what was this soft grey light gradually spreading among the night clouds and marking the line of the pebbly path under her feet? Can it really be the day dawning at last? can that dim, dark outline in the far distance be the grand old Auchterils? Ah, now the rugged stone walls begin to show brown and grey, the low-lying fields take shape and distinctness. A pool of water shines silvery and ghostlike almost at her feet, with a few slender trees grouped about, and there a little to the right of it, almost hidden by the luxuriance of the hedge in which it stands, is a small low gate. The dog is baying loudly now as Lettice stumbles forward and swings it back. A neat little two-storied house stands in front of her, and then—all is darkness and dimness again, for Lettice has fallen senseless on the gravel path.
But kind friends are at hand. The dog has roused the small household, strong arms are round her, and a young girl and an old man are at her side.
“Dinna be afraid, my dear,” said a gentle voice from under a red handkerchief which had been hastily tied over grey locks—“dinna be afraid, my dear, ye’re among friends. I am the minister, do you ken? and this is my daughter Maggie.”
And exactly at the time they were carrying Lettice into the manse between them the woman McKenzie was knocking at the door of her little cottage to rouse Captain McCormack and his sister. Ivie started up with an anathema. “This is ‘daybreak’ with a vengeance,” he exclaimed. Then he opened the door to admit the woman, and hastened upstairs to rouse Lilla.
“They’ll soon bring your horse round,” he explained. “You know you want to be off and away before she wakes.”
They were interrupted by a knock at the bedroom door and a torrent of broad Scotch from the woman McKenzie, who stood outside on the landing holding in her hand a small silver brooch.
Captain Ivie took it from her. “Is this yours, Lilla?” he said, holding it out to her. As he did so it flashed through his mind that he had seen the tiny ornament before. Could it have been in Lettice’s dainty green and silver dress as they drove along the road to Ardvaroch? “Where did you find it?” he demanded of the woman.
The woman indicated the yard at the back of the house with her hand, and commenced her explanation.
Ivie did not wait to hear it. With a whole world of doubt and suspicion in his mind he rushed to Lettice’s door and knocked loudly.
No reply.
He repeated the knocking, and then, unable longer to restrain his impatience, with a wrench and a crack he forced back the rotten lock and woodwork of the door, and entered the room. Lilla followed him.
Captain Ivie stood transfixed. “Where—where has she gone!” he stammered, gazing round him vacantly.
Lilla began to recover herself. “Well, I should say back to Lochiel if she has any sense in her head. Anyhow, it’s all up with you, Ivie, and no mistake this time. I suppose it’s sauve qui peut now. I shall go on to Perth to the Loders, and simply deny the whole affair from beginning to end. I wash my hands of you and your misdeeds utterly for the future.” And she left the room to hasten on her preparations for starting.
Ivie still stood motionless as though he did not hear her. Another dread was beginning to force itself upon him. What
