ange if he
were waiting for a young lady? And if a young lady has fled at night
from her home, and has come secretly along bypaths, which must have
been very fully explained to her beforehand, and is now near that young
gentleman's lodging, if not actually in it--if this be so, why, the
affair is not so very strange after all. And now do you forgive me,
sir?"

"Where is this house? Lead me to it."

"You can hardly get to it except on foot; rough walking, sir, and about
seven miles off by the shortest cut."

"Come, and at once; come quickly. We must be there before--before--"

"Before the young lady can get to the place. Well, from what you say
of the spot in which she was last seen, I think, on reflection, we may
easily do that. I am at your service, sir. But I should warn you
that the owners of the house, man and wife, are both of villanous
character,--would do anything for money. Mr. Margrave, no doubt,
has money enough; and if the young lady chooses to go away with Mr.
Margrave, you know I have no power to help it."

"Leave all that to me; all I ask of you is to show me the house."

We were soon out of the town; the night had closed in; it was very dark,
in spite of a few stars; the path was rugged and precipitous, sometimes
skirting the very brink of perilous cliffs, sometimes delving down to
the seashore--there stopped by rock or wave--and painfully rewinding up
the ascent.

"It is an ugly path, sir, but it saves four miles; and anyhow the road
is a bad one."

We came, at last, to a few wretched fishermen's huts. The moon had now
risen, and revealed the squalor of poverty-stricken ruinous hovels; a
couple of boats moored to the shore, a moaning, fretful sea; and at a
distance a vessel, with lights on board, lying perfectly still at anchor
in a sheltered curve of the bold rude shore. The policeman pointed to
the vessel.

"The yacht, sir; the wind will be in her favour if she sails tonight."

We quickened our pace as well as the nature of the path would permit,
left the huts behind us, and about a mile farther on came to a solitary
house, larger than, from the policeman's description of Margrave's
lodgement, I should have presupposed: a house that in the wilder parts
of Scotland might be almost a laird's; but even in the moonlight it
looked very dilapidated and desolate. Most of the windows were closed,
some with panes broken, stuffed with wisps of straw; there were the
remains of a wall round the house;