any but one who kept company worse than human.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE MUCKLE HOOSE.

The next morning, Janet felt herself in duty bound to make inquiry
concerning those interested in Miss Galbraith. She made, therefore,
the best of her way with Gibbie to the Muckle Hoose, but, as the
latter expected, found it a ruin in a wilderness. Acres of trees
and shrubbery had disappeared, and a hollow waste of sand and gravel
was in their place. What was left of the house stood on the edge of
a red gravelly precipice of fifty feet in height, at whose foot lay
the stones of the kitchen-wing, in which had been the room whence
Gibbie carried Ginevra. The newer part of the house was gone from
its very roots; the ancient portion, all innovation wiped from it,
stood grim, desolated, marred, and defiant as of old. Not a sign of
life was about the place; the very birds had fled. Angus had been
there that same morning, and had locked or nailed up every possible
entrance: the place looked like a ruin of centuries. With
difficulty they got down into the gulf, with more difficulty crossed
the burn, clambered up the rocky bank on the opposite side, and
knocked at the door of the gamekeeper's cottage. But they saw only
a little girl, who told them her father had gone to find the laird,
that her mother was ill in bed, and Mistress Mac Farlane on her way
to her own people.

It came out afterwards that when Angus and the housekeeper heard
Gibbie's taps at the window, and, looking out, saw nobody there, but
the burn within a few yards of the house, they took the warning for
a supernatural interference to the preservation of their lives, and
fled at once. Passing the foot of the stair, Mistress Mac Farlane
shrieked to Ginevra to come, but ran on without waiting a reply.
They told afterwards that she left the house with them, and that,
suddenly missing her, they went back to look for her, but could find
her nowhere, and were just able to make their second escape with
their lives, hearing the house fall into the burn behind them.
Mistress Mac Farlane had been severe as the law itself against
lying among the maids, but now, when it came to her own defence
where she knew her self wrong, she lied just like one of the wicked.

"My dear missie," said Janet, when they got home, "ye maun write to
yer father, or he'll be oot o' 's wuts aboot ye."

Ginevra wrote therefore to the duke's, and to the laird's usual
address in London as wel