“It’s me, Halcro Ericson.  Open the door, Jack.”

“Save us all!” he exclaimed, raising the bolt.  “What brings ye out on a night like this, lad?  Come inside.”

“No; I’m seeking for Thora Kinlay; d’ye ken anything about her; she’s lost!”

“Lost!  No; I ken nothing o’ her.  But wait and I’ll see the bairns.”

He returned to the door in a few minutes.

“Hilda says that Thora was here yestreen,” he said.  “But she went away to Crua Breck when the snow came on so bad.”

I was dismayed at his answer, for it seemed to prove to me that Thora was really lost in the snow.

Paterson offered to continue the search with me, but I advised him to dress and go to Stromness, and make inquiries in the town, while I left him and returned to Lyndardy, always searching for footprints on the snow.

At dawn I resumed the search with my sister Jessie.  We first went to Crua Breck to make sure that Thora had not yet returned.  We heard that Mrs. Kinlay was very ill now, and that Ann could not leave her.

We returned by the top of the cliffs, where the snow was shallow, but nothing rewarded our search until we got as far as North Gaulton, where we observed what appeared to be footprints crossing our path.  They were indistinct, for the wind had disturbed the snow; but they were indeed footprints, and we followed them.  They led us to the brink of the cliff, to the very spot where Thora and I had, many weeks before, gone over to descend to the cave.

“Somebody has gone over here, Hal,” said Jessie.  “Look down on that jag of rock, there is the mark of a rope!”

And at once I remembered about the disappearance of my climbing lines.  I looked to where Jessie pointed, and sure enough there were the marks of a rope, where it had disturbed the snow and grazed against the frosted stone.  There was no rope hanging there, but I well knew that it could have been removed from below by means of a few dexterous jerks and twitches.

I reasoned with myself upon what I saw, and I considered that the person who had gone down the cliff could be none other than Thora, for I believed that none but she knew of that way down to the cave.  Only she and Tom Kinlay knew that I kept my climbing ropes in the byre; but Tom had, as Ann told me, gone out in the St. Magnus.  Only Thora could have taken them, then.

What her possible reason for going down to the cave might be, I did not pause to reflect, further than surmising the probability of her having had some quarrel with her father, and of her having run away from Crua Breck as she had once threatened to do.  But why do this on such a night of storm?