Showers of mud flew behind her as the little horse’s hoofs smote the earth in the fast, steady trot to which she kept him. The east wind almost hurled her out of her seat as she passed the fringe of the town, for she was going north, and it came in from the sea, not half a mile off, with a violence that blew Rob Roy’s mane stiffly out from his neck. At the further side of Kaims flowed the South Lour, making a large tidal lake west of it; along the north side of this estuary the Blackport road ran, straight, but for certain indecisive bends; practically level for eight miles. As she turned along it and found the blast at her back she increased her pace. Not far in front the way dipped, and a sluggish stream which drained the fields on her right hand ran under a low, stone bridge into the marsh which edged the ‘Basin of Kaims,’ as the semi-salt lake was called. The wind had whipped the water into small waves, for it was high tide and the swirl almost invaded her path; a couple of gulls, tilted sideways on outspread wings, were driven over her head. The sound of the crawling water was drowned in the gale which was growing steadily. She pressed on, the horse well in hand, till she reached the summit of the rise half a mile ahead and pulled up for a moment in the shelter of a broken wall. Turning, she strained her eyes into the dusk, and, remote from the undercurrent of the water’s voice, on the following wind there came to her the distant beat of hoofs. She was old, her body’s strength was on the wane, but the fire of her spirit was untouched, as it would be until Death’s hand, which alone could destroy it, should find her out. Though she knew herself face to face with a task which needed more than the force she could bring to it, though her body was cold in the rain and the hands which steered her were aching, her heart leaped in her as she pulled Rob Roy together and cried to him in the wind. The Queen of the Cadgers was on the road again. O faithful hands that have wrought here; that have held sword, or plough or helm! O fighters, with souls rising to the heavy odds, nerves steadying to the shock whose force you dare, unrecking of its weight! What will you do in the Eternity when there will be no cause to fight for, no Goliath of Gath, twice your size, to sally forth against with sling and stone? In that Paradise that we are promised, where will be your place? We cannot tell. But, if there be a just God who made your high hearts, He will answer the question whose solution is not for us.