Punctually at the expiration of the quarter of an hour, Sir Patrick reappeared.  The domestic crisis had betrayed the blind confidence which youth and inexperience had placed in it.  Sir Patrick had won the day.

“Things are settled and quiet, gentlemen; and I am able to accompany you,” he said.  “There are two ways to the shooting-cottage.  One—­the longest—­passes by the inn at Craig Fernie.  I am compelled to ask you to go with me by that way.  While you push on to the cottage, I must drop behind, and say a word to a person who is staying at the inn.”

He had quieted Lady Lundie—­he had even quieted Blanche.  But it was evidently on the condition that he was to go to Craig Fernie in their places, and to see Anne Silvester himself.  Without a word more of explanation he mounted his horse, and led the way out.  The shooting-party left Windygates.

SECOND SCENE.—­THE INN.

CHAPTER THE NINTH.

ANNE.

“YE’LL just permit me to remind ye again, young leddy, that the hottle’s full—­exceptin’ only this settin’-room, and the bedchamber yonder belonging to it.”

So spoke “Mistress Inchbare,” landlady of the Craig Fernie Inn, to Anne Silvester, standing in the parlor, purse in hand, and offering the price of the two rooms before she claimed permission to occupy them.

The time of the afternoon was about the time when Geoffrey Delamayn had started in the train, on his journey to London.  About the time also, when Arnold Brinkworth had crossed the moor, and was mounting the first rising ground which led to the inn.

Mistress Inchbare was tall and thin, and decent and dry.  Mistress Inchbare’s unlovable hair clung fast round her head in wiry little yellow curls.  Mistress Inchbare’s hard bones showed themselves, like Mistress Inchbare’s hard Presbyterianism, without any concealment or compromise.  In short, a savagely-respectable woman who plumed herself on presiding over a savagely-respectable inn.

There was no competition to interfere with Mistress Inchbare.  She regulated her own prices, and made her own rules.  If you objected to her prices, and revolted from her rules, you were free to go.  In other words, you were free to cast yourself, in the capacity of houseless wanderer, on the scanty mercy of a Scotch wilderness.  The village of Craig Fernie was a collection of hovels.  The country about Craig Fernie, mountain on one side and moor on the other, held no second house of public entertainment, for miles and miles round, at any point of the compass.  No rambling individual but the helpless British Tourist wanted food and shelter from strangers in that part of Scotland; and nobody but Mistress Inchbare had food and shelter to sell.  A more thoroughly independent person than this was not to be found on the face of the hotel-keeping earth.  The most universal of