‘If you can find a boy called Stirk at the inn,’ said Gilbert, ‘tell him to wait for me in Blackport till morning.’ And he put some money in the man’s hand. The guard touched his cap and disappeared. It was a long night to Speid. The three passengers built themselves a shelter with luggage and rolled themselves in what wraps and rugs they had; not one of them had any desire to share the inside of the coach with its occupant. The ground was too damp to allow a fire to burn and what wood lay at the roadside was dripping. In a few hours the guard returned with such tools as he could collect; the road improved further on, he said, and the remaining six miles of the stage could be done at a walk after the sun rose. He had seen nothing of Jimmy Stirk. He and the coachman joined the party in the shelter. Gilbert, unsleeping, lay with his eyes on the sky; though he had been much tempted to go on with the guard, he would have gained little by doing so; his choice of a night’s lodging must be between Blackport or Monrummon, and, under the circumstances, one place was intolerable as the other. CHAPTER XXVIII AGNETA ON THE UNEXPECTED GILBERT was wrong in supposing he would arrive in Scotland on the very heels of his letter, for it reached Granny Stirk’s hands three days before the night which ended, for him, on Monrummon Moor. Jimmy, who had brought it from Kaims in the evening, spelt it out successfully by the firelight. The old woman sat, drowned in thought, her fiery eyes on the flame; she could not understand why Cecilia had made no response to what Captain Somerville had written, for she had seen him on the previous day and was aware that no word had come from Edinburgh. Though she knew that Barclay had carried the letter to Fullarton she had no suspicion that he had tampered with it, imagining her action and that of the sailor unknown to anyone. How should Barclay guess its contents? Also, she had no notion to what extent he was in Fordyce’s confidence, or what a leading part he had played in the arrangement of the marriage. Instinct and the remembrance of his visit to her were the only grounds for the distrust with which she looked upon him. She had not doubted Cecilia’s sincerity and she did not doubt it now; but, unlike Gilbert, she was beginning to doubt her courage. She was in this state of mind when she heard that the wedding day was changed from the tenth to the seventh of the month; Speid would only arrive on the evening before the ceremony. The matter had gone beyond her help and she could not imagine what the upshot would be. But, whatever might come of it, she was determined to play her own part to the end. Early to-morrow morning she would send Jimmy to Kaims to tell the sailor of the news she had received and Macquean should go, later, to get a few provisions for Whanland; she, herself, would have a field-day in the laird’s bedroom with mops and dusters and see that his sheets were ‘put to the fire.’