"Oh, he was away on the hills seeking ye, Master Burnet. When he got no word Marjory was in sic a terror that nothing would suffice her but that he maun off to Tweeddale and seek every heather-buss for word of ye. He hadna been gone twae days when half-a-dozen men, or maybe more, came wi’ horse and a’ and a letter frae you yoursel, seekin’ the lass. They said that a’ was peaceably settled now, and that you had sent them to fetch her to meet you at Lanerick. I hadna a thocht but that it was a’ richt and neither had the lass, for she was blithe to gang. Next day, that was yestreen, here comes your servant Nicol wi’ a face as red as a sodger’s coat, and when he finds Marjory gone he sits down wi’ his heid atween his hands and spak never a word to any man. Then aboot the darkening he gets up and eats a dinner as though he hadna seen meat for a twal’month. Then off he gangs, and tells na a soul where he was gaun." The old man had lost all his fine bearing and correct speech, and stood by the door shivering with age and anxiety. A whirlwind of thoughts passed through my mind. Now that the old order was at end, Gilbert’s power had gone with it, and he was likely to find it go hard with him soon. There was but one refuge for him—in his own lands in the west, where, in his great house of Eaglesham or his town dwelling in Glasgow, he might find harborage; for the very fact that they were in the stronghold of the Whigs made them the more secure. Thither he must have gone if he had any remnant of wit, and thither he had taken my lady. And with the thought my whole nature was steeled into one fierce resolve to follow him and call him to bitter account. My first fit of rage had left me, and a more deadly feeling had taken its place. This earth was too narrow a place for my cousin and me to live in, and somewhere in these Westlands I would meet him and settle accounts once and for all. It was not anger I felt, I give you my word. Nay, it was a sense of some impelling fate behind driving me forward to meet this mm, who had crossed me so often. The torments of baffled love and frustrated ambition were all sunk in this one irresistible impulse. I clambered on my horse once more, and a strange sight I must have seemed to the gaping servants and their astonished master. "I am off on the quest," I cried, "but I will give you one word of news ere I go. The king has fled the land, and the Dutch William goes to the throne." And I turned and galloped down the avenue, leaving a throng of pale faces staring after my horse’s tail.