at attracted all his attention.
He gave a glance at the people at the door--the inn-keeper, MacGibbon,
with an unusual Kilmarnock bonnet on that seemed to have been donned
in a hurry; Rixa, in a great perturbation, having just come out of a
shandry-dan with which he had been driving up Glen Shira; Major Paul,
and Wilson the writer. The inn-keeper, who was the first to see the lad,
stopped his speech with confusion and reddened. They gave him a stare
and a curt acknowledgment of his passage of the time of day as the
saying goes, looked after him as he passed round Old Islay's corner, and
found no words till he was out of sight.

"That puts an end to that notion, at any rate," said the Sheriff, almost
pleased to find the Londoner in the wrong with his surmises. And the
others smiled at Mr. Spencer as people do who told you so. Two minutes
ago they were half inclined to give some credit to the plausibility of
his reasoning.

The inn-keeper was visibly disturbed. "Dear me! I have been doing the
lad an injustice after all; I could have sworn he was the man in it if
it was anybody."

"Pooh!" said Rixa, "the Paymaster's boy! I would as soon expect it of
Gillesbeg Aotram."

They went into the hostelry, and Gilian, halfway round the factor's
corner, was well-nigh ridden down by Turner on a roan horse spattered
on the breast and bridle with the foam of a hard morn's labour. He had
scoured the countryside on every outward road, and come early at the
dawn to the ferry-house and rapped wildly on the shutter. But nowhere
were tidings of his daughter. Gilian felt a traitor to this man as he
swept past, seeing nothing, with a face cruel and vengeful, the flanks
of his horse streaked with crimson. The people shrunk back in their
closes and their shop-doors as he passed all covered upon with the
fighting passion that had been slumbering up the glen since ever he came
home from the Peninsula.

It was the breakfast hour in the Paymaster's. Miss Mary was going in
with the Book and had but time to whisper welcome to her boy on the step
of the door, for the brothers waited and the clock was on the stroke.
Gilian had to follow her without a word of explanation. He was hungry;
he welcomed the little respite the taking of food would give him from
the telling of a confidence he felt ashamed to share with Miss Mary.

The Paymaster mumbled a blessing upon the vivours, then fed noisily,
looking, when he looked at Gilian at all, but at the upp