"I swear to you, my Highland whore, you will tell me where she is to be found. Because if you don't, this very moment, I will find her myself, and with this same pistol put a hole in the real Mary Scott, and leave her to die in the dirt!" "My sister has a second home," she stammered, hardly knowing how she found the words. "On Kilkenny ridge, beyond the ravine. A small path winds up to it from the Standing Stone, one branch left, then two to the right. We quarreled, and the girl has gone off to live with her. It is the whole truth, I swear it. God have mercy on us!" "I believe you speak the truth at that," he said coolly. And reaching inside his unbuttoned officer's coat, he drew out a felt purse. Loosing the strand with his fingers, he reached inside and removed several gold coins, which he placed gently on a table beside her. "Thank you, Mrs. Scott. I will take that as permission to pay court upon your daughter. I fancy I may even marry her, if she is the girl I'm thinking of. Good day to you." He stepped past her, out through the open door, and remounted his beautiful bay. Seven Towards evening the weather did in fact turn foul, with heavy clouds blowing in from the sea. Laden with rain, and stirred to inner violence by the turbulent upland airs, they discharged their burden with a vengeance among deep cracks of thunder. Bolts of white fire stabbed the earth as the deluge broke, turning good roads to bad, and bad to treacherous and impassible quagmire. So forbidding had the mountain paths become that even the young Lord Purceville, the most stubborn and heedless of men, was forced to turn back and seek shelter, postponing, for one day at least, his desired meeting with young Mary Scott, of whom he had heard such glowing reports. So deeply, in fact, had the old man's words affected him, that he fancied (though this was unlikely) he truly had seen her once before, gathering wildflowers on a green hillside in Spring. And whether of human or otherworldly origins, the spell, to which he was particularly susceptible, had done its work on him. He wanted her. * * * The man staggered wearily down the high embankment, until he came to the final, near-vertical stretch of cliff. The cold rain lashed him; the need to reach shelter and the warmth of a fire had become all consuming. He had not eaten, or slept, for days. But for all of this, and for the pride that had once been his, he knew that he must now be supremely cautious. One half-hearted grip on the dripping rock, one misplaced footing, would send him crashing to the ground below. And while at this height such a fall might not mean death, it surely would mean broken bones, which in his present plight, hunted and desperate, amounted to one and the same thing.