“I’ve had my supper at Mr. Lindsey’s, mother,” I said, as I dragged my bicycle out of the back-place.  “I’ve just got to go out, whether I will or no, and I don’t know when I’ll be in, either—­do you think I can sleep in my bed when I don’t know where Maisie is?”

“You’ll not do much good, Hugh, where the police have failed,” she answered.  “There’s yon man Chisholm been here during the evening, and he tells me they haven’t come across a trace of her, so far.”

“Chisholm’s been here, then?” I exclaimed.  “For no more than that?”

“Aye, for no more than that,” she replied.  “And then this very noon there was that Irishwoman that kept house for Crone, asking at the door for you.”

“What, Nance Maguire!” I said.  “What did she want?”

“You!” retorted my mother.  “Nice sort of people we have coming to our door in these times!  Police, and murderers, and Irish—­”

“Did she say why she wanted me?” I interrupted her.

“I gave her no chance,” said my mother.  “Do you think I was going to hold talk with a creature like that at my steps?”

“I’d hold talk with the devil himself, mother, if I could get some news of Maisie!” I flung back at her as I made off.  “You’re as bad as Andrew Dunlop!”

There was the house door between her and me before she could reply to that, and the next instant I had my bicycle on the road and my leg over the saddle, and was hesitating before I put my foot to the pedal.  What did Nance Maguire want of me?  Had she any news of Maisie?  It was odd that she should come down—­had I better not ride up the town and see her?  But I reflected that if she had any news—­which was highly improbable—­she would give it to the police; and so anxious was I to test what Scott had hinted at, that I swung on to my machine without further delay or reflection and went off towards Hathercleugh.

And as I crossed the old bridge, in the opening murmur of a coming storm, I had an illumination which came as suddenly as the first flash of lightning that followed just afterwards.  It had been a matter of astonishment to me all day long that nobody, with the exception of the one man at East Ord, had noticed Maisie as she went along the road between Berwick and Mindrum on the previous evening—­now I remembered, blaming myself for not having remembered it before, that there was a short cut, over a certain right-of-way, through the grounds of Hathercleugh House, which would save her a good three miles in her journey.  She would naturally be anxious to get to her aunt as quickly as possible; she would think of the nearest way—­she would take it.  And now I began to understand the whole thing:  Maisie had gone into the grounds of Hathercleugh, and—­she had never left them!