“That puts an end to that notion, at any rate,” said the Sheriff, almost pleased to find the Londoner in the wrong with his surmises. And the others smiled at Mr. Spencer as people do who told you so. Two minutes ago they were half inclined to give some credit to the plausibility of his reasoning. The inn-keeper was visibly disturbed. “Dear me! I have been doing the lad an injustice after all; I could have sworn he was the man in it if it was anybody.” “Pooh!” said Rixa, “the Paymaster’s boy! I would as soon expect it of Gillesbeg Aotram.” They went into the hostelry, and Gilian, halfway round the factor’s corner, was well-nigh ridden down by Turner on a roan horse spattered on the breast and bridle with the foam of a hard morn’s labour. He had scoured the countryside on every outward road, and come early at the dawn to the ferry-house and rapped wildly on the shutter. But nowhere were tidings of his daughter. Gilian felt a traitor to this man as he swept past, seeing nothing, with a face cruel and vengeful, the flanks of his horse streaked with crimson. The people shrunk back in their closes and their shop-doors as he passed all covered upon with the fighting passion that had been slumbering up the glen since ever he came home from the Peninsula. It was the breakfast hour in the Paymaster’s. Miss Mary was going in with the Book and had but time to whisper welcome to her boy on the step of the door, for the brothers waited and the clock was on the stroke. Gilian had to follow her without a word of explanation. He was hungry; he welcomed the little respite the taking of food would give him from the telling of a confidence he felt ashamed to share with Miss Mary. The Paymaster mumbled a blessing upon the vivours, then fed noisily, looking, when he looked at Gilian at all, but at the upper buttons of his coat as if through him, and letting not so little as the edge of his gaze fall upon his face. That was a studious contempt, and Gilian knew it, and there were many considerations that made him feel no injury at it. But the Cornal’s utter indifference--that sent his eye roaming unrecognising into Gilian’s and away again without a spark of recognition--was painful. It would have been an insufferable meal, even in his hunger, but for Miss Mary’s presence. The little lady would be smiling to him across the table without any provocation whenever her brothers’ eyes were averted, and the faint perfume of a silk shawl she had about her shoulders endowed the air with an odour of domesticity, womanhood, maternity. For a long time nobody spoke, and the pigeons came boldly to the sill of the open window and cooed. At last said the Paymaster, as if he were resuming a conversation: “I met him out there on horseback; the hunt is still up, I’m thinking.” “Ay?” said the Cornal, as if he gripped the subject and waited the continuance of the narrative.