'The Todds,' he had concluded with a laugh, 'have a tradition that they descend from Eylaf--one of the bodyguard of St. Cuthbert and his coffin--who, in a time of famine stole a cheese, and was for a time turned into a tod. The tod, or fox, is their totem, and him they diligently pursue.' All that he had said then came back now with special meaning. Mrs. Chesters pondered deeply as to how she had best act in this conjuncture, and had not yet determined, when on the next afternoon she overheard a scrap of conversation as she was passing beside the stables. She heard the head groom call to the stable lad to saddle a second horse and ride out to meet the Master on his way home from hunting that afternoon. 'Which way will I take?' asked the lad in reply. 'The Master rode the airt o' Ladiesdale,' the head groom had replied, for he was somewhat of a wag. _Ladiesdale_ for Liddesdale! Mrs. Chesters fled; her cheek was burning, but her mind was made up. She got out maps and discovered where 'The Bower'--ominous name--lay, and what tracks led thereto. Thither she would ride on the next hunting day and confront the girl, settle the matter with her husband, and put an end to his shameful intrigue at once. She had not very long to wait, for in the week after the Meet was advertised at the Craig, which was, she knew, some few miles west of The Bower, overlooking the Black Burn. Early in the afternoon she rode out 'to meet her husband,' as she told the groom, when she mounted, but in reality to catch him, if she could, with the girl on his way back with her to her home. She mounted up the fell to the southward on whose crest the track showed like a wisp of hay left by the reaper. Gaining the top she paused and looked athwart the mighty view outstretched before her. To her husband she knew it was as Swinburne's 'great glad land that knows not bourne nor bound,' but to herself it was a desert. Below her the barren moorlands spread away--'harvestless as ocean'--till they met the whitelands of the further fells, where wandering sheep sought their living. On the sky's verge ran the line of Rome's great barrier of wall. This seemed to increase the sense of infinity already given by the landscape, for the mighty wall was now but a wreck upon Time's shore. In the mid way 'twixt moor and whiteland lay The Bower. Mrs. Chesters rode on down towards the farmhouse, where it stood eminent upon a knoll beyond the burn, covered with ivy, and sheltered by ash trees from the blasts of the west wind. She had marked a clump of rowans and geans a hundred yards or so from the burn where she determined to stop her horse and reconnoitre before going up to the farm itself.