"Then maybe it's true," said Matthew, with a strange quiet. There was a pause. Paul was the first to shake off his surprise. "She might be at Little Town--in Keswick--twenty places." "She might be, Master Paul, but she's nowt o' the sort. She's on her way to London, Mercy is." It was Natt, the stableman at the Ghyll, who spoke. At that the old man's trance seemed to break. "Gone! Mercy gone! Gone without a word! Why? Where?" "She'd her little red bundle aside her; and she cried a gay bit to hersel' in the corner. I saw her mysel'." Paul's face became rigid with anger. "There's villainy in this--be sure of that!" he said, hotly. The laird rocked his head backward and forward, and his eyes swam with tears; but he stood in the middle as quiet as a child. "My laal Mercy," he said, faintly, "gone from her old father." Paul stepped to the old man's side, and put a great hand on his shoulder as softly as a woman might have soothed her babe. Then turning about, and glancing wrathfully in the faces around them, he said: "Some waistrel has been at work here. Who is he? Speak out. Anybody know?" No one spoke. Only the laird moaned feebly, and reeled like a drunken man. Then, with the first shock over, the old man began to laugh. What a laugh it was! "No matter," he said; "no matter. Now I've nowt left, I've nowt to lose. There's comfort in that, anyways. Ha! ha! ha! But my heart is like to choke for all. You say reet, Mr. Ritson, there's villainy in it." The old man's eyes wandered vacantly. "Her own father," he mumbled; "her lone old father--broken-hearted--him 'at loved her--no matter, I've nowt left to--Ha! ha! ha!" He tried to walk away jauntily, and with a ghastly smile on his battered face, but he stumbled and fell insensible into Paul's outstretched arms. They loosened his neckerchief and bathed his forehead. Just then Hugh Ritson strode into the tent, stepped up to the group, and looked down over the bent heads at the stricken father lying in his brother's arms. Paul's lips trembled and his powerful frame quivered. "Who knows but the scoundrel is here now?" he said; and his eyes traversed the men about him. "If he is, let him look at his pitiless work; and may the sight follow him to his death!" At that moment Hugh Ritson's face underwent an awful change. Then the old man opened his eyes in consciousness, and Hugh knelt before him and put a glass of water to his lips. CHAPTER VIII. In the homestead of the Ritsons the wide old ingle was aglow with a cheerful fire, and Mrs. Ritson stood before it baking oaten cake on a "griddle." The table was laid for supper with beef and beer and milk and barley-bread. In the seat of a recessed window, Paul Ritson and Greta Lowther sat together.