John Legat, usually known in the Bailiwick as _Lang Leggie_, the running footman (for one of those officials still lingered in the old-fashioned household of Rohallion), scoured all Kyle and Cunninghame, with hard boiled eggs and sherry in the silver bulb that topped his long cane, scarcely pausing to imbibe these, his sustenance when on duty; and though he returned thrice to the castle, he was despatched like a liveried Mercury, thrice again, but without hearing tidings of the missing one. Since the last Duke of Queensberry ("old Q.") who died in 1810, Lord Rohallion was perhaps the last Scottish peer who retained such an old state appendage as a running footman. Long did they all, save the sullen Master, hope, and even flatter themselves, that the wanderer would return; but days became weeks, and no trace could be discovered and no tidings were heard of him anywhere. An armed lugger that did not display her colours, but was very foreign in her build and in the rake of her masts, had been seen standing off and on near Rohallion Head. About midnight she was close in shore, steering clear of the Partan Craig, and burning a blue light. By sunrise she was far off at sea: could he have gone with _her_? There had been a numerous and somewhat lawless body of gipsies encamped near the oakwood shaw on the night of his disappearance, for the ashes of their night-fires had been found, together with well-picked bones and broken bottles, the usual _débris_ of their suppers _al fresco_; but there were other traces more alarming: several large pools of blood, which showed that there had been a fight--perhaps murder--committed among them. These wanderers had departed by sunrise, and passed beyond the craigs of Kyle, where all traces of them were lost. The quartermaster thought of the money he had given Quentin, and trembled lest the gold had only ensured his destruction, till the dominie reassured him by remembering that there were more Kennedies than Faas among those gipsies, and the former would be sure to protect him for the sake of his name. On that night, too, the pressgang from Ayr had been more than ten miles inland, in search of certain seamen who had sought refuge as farm labourers; so this knowledge was another source of fear, as there was a great demand for men, and the officers were not very particular. There had been a recruiting party beating up for various regiments in the Bailiwick of Cunninghame, and it had been at Maybole on the night after Quentin fled. The party had marched, no one could say whether for Edinburgh or Glasgow. Could Quentin have enlisted? The night was a dark and stormy one; could he have lost his way and perished in the Doon or the Girvan, both of which were swollen by recent rains? This was barely possible, as he knew the country so well.