"Then it is come and gone--"

"Disappear as you appeared! None here wants your peril, and the griefs and evils were you taken."

"I expected to go back. The brig _Seawing_ brought me. It sails in a week's time."

"You must be upon it, then."

"Yes, I suppose so." He drew a long, impatient breath. "Let us leave all that! Sufficient to the day--I wander and wander, and there are stones and thorns--and Circe, too!... You have the steady light, but I have not! The wind blows it--it flickers!"

"Ah, I know flickering, too!"

"Is there a great Senor Somebody? Sometimes I feel it--and then there is only the wild a.s.s in the desert! The dust blinds and the mire sticks."

"Ah, Old Saracen--"

The other pushed the embers together. "This cave--this glen.... Do you remember that time we were in Amsterdam and each dreamed one night the same dream?"

"I remember."

The fire was sinking for the night. The moon was down in the western sky. Around and around the cave and the glen and the night the inner ear heard, as it were, a long, faint, wordless cry for help. Alexander brooded, brooded, his eyes upon the lessening flame. At last, with a sudden movement, he rose. "I smell the morning air. Let us be going!"

The two covered the embers and left the cave. The moon stood above the western rim of the glen, the sound of the water was deep and full, frost hung in the air, the trees great and small stood quiet, in a winter dream. Ian and Alexander climbed the glen-side, avoiding Mother Binning's cot. Now they were in open country, moving toward Black Hill.

The walk was not a short one. Daybreak was just behind the east when they came to the long heath-grown hill that faced the house, the purple ridge where as boys they had met. They climbed it, and in the east was light. Beneath them, among the trees, Black Hill showed roof and chimney. Then up the path toward them came Peter Lindsay.

He seemed to come in haste and a kind of fear. When he saw the two he threw up his hands, then violently gestured to them to go back upon their path, drop beneath the hilltop. They obeyed, and he came to them himself, panting, sweat upon him for all the chill night. "Mr.

Ian--Laird! Sogers at the house--"

"Ah!"

"Twelve of them. They rade in an hour syne. The lieutenant swears ye're there, Mr. Ian, and they search the house. Didna ye see the lights? Mrs. Alison tauld me to gae warn ye--"

CHAPTER x.x.xV

The soldiers, having fruitlessly searched Black Hill, for the present set up quarters there, and searched the neighborhood. They gave a wide cast to that word. It seemed to include all this part of Scotland.

Before long they appeared, not unforeseen, at Glenfernie.

The lieutenant was a wiry, wide-nostriled man, determined to please superiors and win promotion. He had now men at the Jardine Arms no less than men at Black Hill. Face to face with the laird of Glenfernie in the latter's hall, he explained his errand.

"Yes," said Glenfernie. "I saw you coming up the hill. Will you take wine?"

"To your health, sir!"

"To your health!"

The lieutenant set down the gla.s.s and wiped his lips. "I have orders, Mr. Jardine, which I may not disobey."

"Exactly so, Lieutenant."

"My duty, therefore, brings me in at your door--though of course I may say that you and your household are hardly under suspicion of harboring a proscribed rebel! A good Whig"--he bowed stiffly--"a volunteer serving with the Duke in the late trouble, and, last but not least, a personal enemy of the man we seek--"

"The catalogue is ample!" said Glenfernie. "But still, having your orders to make no exception, you must search my house. It is at your service. I will show you from room to room."

Lieutenant and soldiers and laird went through the place, high and low and up and down. "Perfunctory!" said the lieutenant twice. "But we must do as we are told!"

"Yes," said the laird. "This is my sister's garden. The small building there is an old school-room."

They met Alice walking in the garden, in the winter sunshine.

Strickland, too, joined them here. Presentations over, the lieutenant again repeated his story.

"Perfunctory, of course, here--perfunctory! The only trace that we think we have we found in a glen near you. There is a cave there that I understand he used to haunt. We found ashes, still warm, where had been a fire. Pity is, the ground is so frozen no footstep shows!"

"You are making escape difficult," said Strickland.

"I flatter myself that we'll get him between here and the sea! I am going presently," said the lieutenant, "to a place called White Farm.

But I am given to understand that there are good reasons--saving the lady's presence--why he'll find no shelter there."

"Over yonder is the old keep," said Glenfernie. "When that is pa.s.sed, I think you will have seen everything."

They left Strickland and Alice and went to the keep. Their footsteps and those of the soldiers behind them rang upon the stone stairs.

"Above is the room," said the laird of Glenfernie, "where as a boy I used to play at alchemy. I built a furnace. I had an intention of making lead into gold. I keep old treasures there still, and it is still my dear old lair--though with a difference as I travel on, though with a difference, Lieutenant, as we travel on!"

They came into the room, quiet, filled with books and old apparatus, with a burning fire, with sunlight and shadow dappling floor and wall.

"Well, he would hardly hide here!" said the lieutenant.

"Not by received canons," answered Glenfernie.

The lieutenant spoke to the soldiers. "Go about and look beneath and behind matters. There are no closets?"

"There are only these presses built against the stone." The laird opened them as he spoke. "You see--blank s.p.a.ce!" He moved toward a corner. "This structure is my ancient furnace of which I spoke. I still keep it fuel-filled for firing." As he spoke he opened a sizable door.

The lieutenant, stooping, saw the piled wood. "I don't know much of alchemy," he said. "I've never had time to get around to those things.

It's bringing out sleeping values isn't it?"

"Something like that." He shut the furnace door, and they stood watching the soldiers search the room. In no long time this stood a completed process.

"Perfunctory!" said again the lieutenant. "Now men, we'll to White Farm!"

"There is food and drink for them below, on this chilly day," said the laird, "and perhaps in the hall you'll drink another gla.s.s of wine?"

All went down the stairs and out of the keep. Another half-hour and the detail, lieutenant and men, mounted and rode away. Glenfernie and Strickland watched them down the winding road, clear of the hill, out upon the highway.

Alexander went back alone to the keep that, also, from its widened loopholes, might watch the searchers ride away. He mounted the stair; he came into his old room. Ian stood beside the table. The sizable furnace door hung open, the screen of heaped wood was disarranged.