“No, I must be off to work, but good luck to you.” So the next day Walter said good-bye to Janet and went up to the Hall. He met Elspeth in the courtyard. “Good morning, neighbour, how is all with you and how is your bonnie little mistress?” “I am doing as well as can be expected, and Mistress Audry is not ailing.” “I meant Mistress Aline, not that Mistress Audry is not as bonnie a child as one would meet in a nine days’ march.” “Ay and a good hearted one too, neighbour,” said Elspeth. “It’s not every child who would take kindly to ranking second after they had always been reckoned the bonniest in the whole countryside. But there, Mistress Aline might give herself airs, and yet one really could not tell that she knew she was pretty; so I do not think it has ever occurred to Mistress Audry to mind and she just enjoys looking at her. They are fine bairns both of them.” “Ay, they are that,” said Walter. “I just pray,” continued Elspeth, “that I may live to see them well settled. My mother served in the Hall and my grandmother and her father and his father again, and so it is. As long as there is a Mowbray I hope there will be some of our blood to serve them and Mistress Gillespie is a Mowbray, mind you that, and some say,” she went on in a whisper, “that she should be the Mistress of Holwick. It was a new place when the old man built it, the old Mowbray property is down Middleton way and is now let. Maybe, if there’s anything in it, that’s partly why Mistress Mowbray does not love the child. But there, it is all gossip, and I must be moving.” Walter settled his packs and took as long over it as he could in the hope of catching sight of Aline. In this he was successful, for a few minutes afterwards he saw the children, who were really looking for him. Aline handed him a letter for Ian and asked how soon he expected to be able to deliver it. “I wish we could see him,” said Audry involuntarily. Aline looked at her and Audry subsided. But Walter, who spent his life studying human nature, saw the glance and began to puzzle it out. “So Ian Menstrie does know both the children then and it was not a mere matter of courtesy to send the chatelaine for Audry. But this is very curious,” he reasoned. “Janet Arnside has not mentioned him nor have any others of the reformed faith. Strange how he could be in Holwick and not see them. And I mind too, that he said he had never seen Richard Mowbray. Truly it is mystifying.” Another thing that perplexed him was Janet and John’s desire that Mistress Aline should hear of the faith. Obviously, she knew of it and yet they were unaware of the fact. He began to see daylight;--somehow the children must have found Menstrie in some hiding place. Walter was too cautious a man to mention anything that he discovered in his journeys that might conceivably bring mischief, and too honourable a man to try and discover a secret that clearly did not concern him.