“Have you gone up the glen?”

“That was tried this morning at first light.  But that is just opposite to Skene’s and the way she certainly took at first.  She would have to turn and go about through the woods, or White Farm would see her.”  His voice had a haunting note of fear and trouble.

Glenfernie caught it.  “She was not out of health nor unhappy?”

“She is changed from the old Elspeth.  When you ask her if she is unhappy she says that she is not....  I do not know.  Something is wrong.  With the others, I am seeking about as though I expected each moment to see her sitting or standing by the roadside.  But I do not expect to see her.  I do not know what I expect.  We have sent to Windyedge to apprehend those gipsies.”

“Let me speak one moment to Mr. Strickland to send the men forth and go himself.  Then I am ready.”

On Black Alan he rode with Robin down the hill and through the wood and upon the White Farm way.  The earth was mainly bare of snow, but frozen hard.  The hoofs rang out but left no print.  The air hung still, light and dry; the sun, far in the south, sent slanting, pale-gold beams.  The two men made little speech as they rode.  They passed men and youths, single figures and clusters.

“Ony news, Littlefarm?  We’ve been—­or we’re going—­seeking here, or here—­”

A woman stopped them.  “It was thae gipsies, sirs!  I had a dream about them, five nights syne!  A lintwhite was flying by them, and they gave chase.  Either it’s that or she made away with herself!  I had a dream that might be read that way, too.”

When they came to White Farm it was to find there only Jenny and Menie and Merran.

“Somebody maun stay to keep the house warm gin the lassie come stumbling hame, cauld and hungry and half doited!  Eh, Glenfernie, ye that are a learned man and know the warld, gie us help!”

“I am going up the glen,” said Alexander to Greenlaw.  “I do not know why, but I think it should be tried again.  And I know it, root and branch.  I am going afoot.  I will leave Black Alan here.”

They wasted no time.  He went, while Robin Greenlaw on his gray took the opposed direction.  Looking back, he saw the great fire that Jenny kept, dancing through the open door and in the pane of the window.  Then the trees and the winding of the path shut it away, shut away house and field and all token of human life.

He moved swiftly to the mouth of the glen, but then more slowly.  The trees soared bare, the water rushed with a hoarse sound, snow lay in clefts.  So well he knew the place!  There was no spot where foot might have climbed, no ledge nor opening where form might lay, huddled or outstretched, that lacked his searching eye or hand.  Here was the pebbly cape with the thorn-tree where in May he had come upon Elspeth, sitting by the water, singing....  Farther on he turned into that smaller, that fairy glen, bending