The Dominie and I looked each at the other in our turns. ’The Grey Man himself,’ said I. ’The Black Deil himsel’!’ said he. ’We will exorcise him, black or grey!’ cried the Dominie. ’I am going direct to the bailies and elders to tell them that this school has vacation till it pleases me to take it up again.’ So he went out and I waited alone with the boy William Dalrymple, whose rosy and innocent face was all beblubbered with weeping. I slapped him on the shoulder and bade him take heart because he had found friends. Then I also told him that on the morrow he must come with me to the Earl of Cassillis, and by-and-by it might be to the King himself. ’Will the Dominie come too?’ the boy asked very anxiously. So when I told him that he would, he seemed more satisfied, and asked leave to go home to his mother. I had, indeed, something to tell Nell Kennedy that night when I rode home from Maybole. And upon the head of it we two sat long in talk, and were more than ever set on riding to Auchendrayne. But first we decided that the Dominie and I should carry William Dalrymple to the Earl, that he might certify to him what he had already testified to us at the schoolhouse in the Kirk Vennel. But on the morrow we, that is the Dominie and I, had it set to ride to Cassillis by way of Maybole. On the way we came to the little hut of the widow Dalrymple, for William was a town’s bursar, and so got his learning from the Session as a poor scholar. The door was shut, and a neighbour’s wife cried to us that both the boy and his mother had gone on to Cassillis before us. So we rode forward. Yet we must have missed them on the way, for when we came to the castle yett there was nobody there before us, and the Earl himself had ridden forth to the hawking by the waterside. Then came out to us foolish Sir Thomas Tode with his long story, which began as usual with the Black Vault of Dunure, and was proceeding by devious ways when his wife came round the corner—whereat right briskly he changed his tune. ’And as I was saying,’ he said, ’on Tuesday seven nights we had a shrewd frost that nipped the buds.’ ’It is as well for you, old dotard,’ cried his wife, listening a moment, ’I had thought ye were at your auld tricks again.’ So we went in, and were busily partaking of the cheer of Mistress Tode when we became aware of the noise of altercation without. ’Save us,’ said the cook, ’it is a mercy that neither my lord nor my lady are within gate, wi’ a’ that narration of noise outbye! What can it be at a’?’ And she went out to inquire. But if the disturbance was loud before, it certainly became ten times worse when Mistress Tode disappeared. I got up to look, and the Dominie followed me. We saw a tall, grey-haired woman stand upon the causeway of the courtyard, with one hand on her hip, and with the other tossing back the straying witch locks from her brow.