L BY FIRE

CHAPTER XXXIII. PATSY RAISES THE COUNTRY

CHAPTER XXXIV. THE PRISON-BREAKERS

CHAPTER XXXV. THE PICTS' WAY IS THE WOMAN'S WAY

CHAPTER XXXVI. STIFF-NECKED AND REBELLIOUS

CHAPTER XXXVII. A PICTISH HONEYMOON

CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE LAND OF ALWAYS AFTERNOON

CHAPTER XXXIX. REBEL GALLOWAY

CHAPTER XL. "WHY DO THEY LOVE YOU?"

CHAPTER XLI. THE BATTLE OF THE CAUSEWAY

CHAPTER I

HEIRESS AND HEIR

They stood high on the Abbey cliff-edge--an old man, eagle-profiled,
hawk-beaked, cockatoo-crested, with angry grey eyebrows running peakily
upwards towards his temples at either side ... and a boy.

They were the Earl Raincy and his grandson Louis--all the world knew
them in that country of the Southern Albanach. For Leo Raincy was a
great man, and the lad the heir of all he possessed.

For all--or almost all--they looked upon belonged to the Earl of Raincy.
Even those blue hills bounding the meadow valleys to the north hid a
fair half of his property, and he was sorry for that. Because he was a
land miser, hoarding parishes and townships. He grudged the sea its
fringe of foam, the three-mile fishing limit, the very high-and-low mark
between the tides which was not his, but belonged to the crown--along
which the common people had a right to pass, and where fisherfolk from
the neighbouring villages might fish and dry their nets, when all ought
to have been his.

The earl's dark eyes passed with carelessness over hundreds of
farm-towns, snug sheltered villages, mills with little threads of white
wimpling away from the unheard constant clack of the wheel, barns, byres
and stackyards--all were his, but of these he took no heed.

Behind them Castle Raincy itself stood up finely from the plain of
corn-land and green park, an artificial lake in front, deep trees all
about, patterned gardens, the fiery flash of hot-house glass where the
sun struck, and pinnacles high in air, above all the tall tower from
which Margaret de Raincy had defied the English invader during the
minority of James the Fifth. The earl's eyes passed all these over. He
did not see them as aught to take pride in.

What he lingered upon was the wide pleasant valley beneath him, with a
burn running and lurking among twinkling birches, interspersed with
alders, many finely drained fields with the cows feeding belly-deep with
twitching tails, and the sweep of the ripening crops which ran off to
either side