The realization made me sick with fear.  The idea of my girl being trapped by such a villain as I firmly believed the man whom we knew as Sir Gilbert Carstairs to be was enough to shake every nerve in my body; but to think that she had been in his power for twenty-four hours, alone, defenceless, brought on me a faintness that was almost beyond sustaining.  I felt physically and mentally ill—­weak.  And yet, God knows! there never was so much as a thought of defeat in me.  What I felt was that I must get there, and make some effort that would bring the suspense to an end for both of us.  I was beginning to see how things might be—­passing through those grounds she might have chanced on something, or somebody, or Sir Gilbert himself, who, naturally, would not let anybody escape him that could tell anything of his whereabouts.  But if he was at Hathercleugh, what of the tale which Hollins had told us the night before?—­nay, that very morning, for it was after midnight when he sat there in Mr. Lindsey’s parlour.  And, suddenly, another idea flashed across me—­Was that tale true, or was the man telling us a pack of lies, all for some end?  Against that last notion there was, of course, the torn scrap of letter to be set; but—­but supposing that was all part of a plot, meant to deceive us while these villains—­taking Hollins to be in at the other man’s game—­got clear away in some totally different direction?  If it was, then it had been successful, for we had taken the bait, and all attention was being directed on Glasgow, and none elsewhere, and—­as far as I knew—­certainly none at Hathercleugh itself, whither nobody expected Sir Gilbert to come back.

But these were all speculations—­the main thing was to get to Hathercleugh, acting on the hint I had just got from Scott, and to take a look round the old part of the big house, as far as I could.  There was no difficulty about getting there—­although I had small acquaintance with the house and grounds, never having been in them till the night of my visit to Sir Gilbert Carstairs.  I knew the surroundings well enough to know how to get in amongst the shrubberies and coppices—­I could have got in there unobserved in the daytime, and it was now black night.  I had taken care to extinguish my lamp as soon as I got clear of the Border Bridge, and now, riding along in the darkness, I was secure from the observation of any possible enemy.  And before I got to the actual boundaries of Hathercleugh, I was off the bicycle, and had hidden it in the undergrowth at the roadside; and instead of going into the grounds by the right-of-way which I was convinced Maisie must have taken, I climbed a fence and went forward through a spinny of young pine in the direction of the house.  Presently I had a fine bit of chance guidance to it—­as I parted the last of the feathery branches through which I had quietly made my way, and came out on the edge of the open park, a vivid flash of lightning showed me the great building standing on its plateau