Below me was a sloping roof of wood which ended in a sheer wall of maybe twelve feet. Below that in turn was the great yard, flagged with stone, but now hidden under a cloak of snow. Around it were stables, empty of horses, windy, cold, and dismal. I cannot tell how the whole place depressed me. I felt as though I were descending into some pit of the dead. Staunching the blood from my wrist—by good luck my left—as best I might with my kerchief, I slipped down the white roof and dropped into the court. It was a wide, empty place, and, in the late afternoon, looked grey and fearsome. The dead black house behind, with its many windows all shuttered and lifeless, shadowed the place like a pall. At my back was the back door of the house, like the other locked and iron-clamped. I seemed to myself to have done little good by my escapade in coming thither. Wandering aimlessly, I entered the stables, scarce thinking what I was doing. Something about the place made me stop and look. I rubbed my eyes and wondered. There, sure enough, were signs of horses having been recently here. Fresh hay and a few oats were in the mangers, and straw and dung in the stalls clearly proclaimed that not long agone the place had been tenanted. I rushed out into the yard, and ran hither and thither searching the ground. There were hoof-marks—fool that I was not to have marked them before—leading clearly from the stable door to the gate on the High Street. I rushed to the iron doors and tugged at them. To my amazement I found that they yielded, and I was staring into the darkening street. So the birds had been there and flown in our brief absence. I cursed my ill-fortune with a bitter heart. Suddenly I saw something dark lying amid the snow. I picked it up and laid it tenderly in my bosom. For it was a little knot of blue velvet ribbon, such as my lady wore. CHAPTER IV UP HILL AND DOWN DALE I rushed up the street, leaving the gates swinging wide behind me, and down the lane to where Nicol waited. In brief, panting words I told him my tale. He heard it without a movement, save to turn his horse’s head up the street. I swung myself into the saddle, and, with no more delay, we made for our lodgings. "There is but one thing that we may do," said I. "The night is an ill one, but if it is ill for us ’tis ill for them." And at the words I groaned, for I thought of my poor Marjory in the storm and cold. At Mistress Macmillan’s I paid the lawing, and having eaten a hearty meal, we crammed some food into our saddle-bags and bade the hostess good-bye. Then we turned straight for the west port of the city.