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Having thus dispersed his myrmidons in various directions, he himself hastened by devious paths through the wood of Warroch to his appointed interview with Hatteraick, from whom he hoped to learn at more leisure than last night's conference admitted the circumstances attending the return of the heir of Ellangowan to his native country.
Kennedy's horse had come to the stable door alone, with the saddle turned round below its belly and the reins of the bridle broken; and that a farmer had informed them in passing that there was a smuggling lugger burning like a furnace on the other side of the Point of Warroch, and that, though he had come through the wood, he had seen or heard nothing of Kennedy or the young Laird, 'only there was Dominie Sampson gaun rampauging about like mad, seeking for them.
Sampson coloured up to the eyes not at the implied taunt, which he would never have discovered, or resented if he had, but at some idea which crossed his own mind. "I have been in an error," he said; "of a surety I should have tarried for the babe." So saying, he snatched his bone-headed cane and hat, and hurried away towards Warroch wood, faster than he was ever known to walk before, or after.
'But, Captain, bullying won't do; you'll hardly get out of this country without accounting for a little accident that happened at Warroch Point a few years ago. Hatteraick's looks grew black as midnight. 'For my part, continued Glossin, 'I have no particular wish to be hard upon an old acquaintance; but I must do my duty.
He was a daring chield, and he fought his ship till she blew up like peelings of ingans; and Frank Kennedy, he had been the first man to board, and he was flung like a quarter of a mile off, and fell into the water below the rock at Warroch Point, that they ca' the Gauger's Loup to this day. 'And Mr. Bertram's child, said the stranger, 'what is all this to him?
All was now bustle at Ellangowan. The Laird and his servants, male and female, hastened to the wood of Warroch. The tenants and cottagers in the neighbourhood lent their assistance, partly out of zeal, partly from curiosity. Boats were manned to search the sea-shore, which, on the other side of the Point, rose into high and indented rocks.
Above all, here, and here only, were observed the vestiges of a child's foot; and as it could be seen nowhere else, and the hard horse-track which traversed the wood at Warroch was contiguous to the spot, it was natural to think that the boy might have escaped in that direction during the confusion.
The walk was a long one, for the Point of Warroch lay on the farther side of the Ellangowan property, which was interposed between it and Woodbourne. Besides, the Dominie went astray more than once, and met with brooks swoln into torrents by the melting of the snow, where he, honest man, had only the summer recollection of little trickling rills.
'I believe that's very true, said the postilion. 'So, sir, she grippit him, and clodded him like a stane from the sling ower the craigs of Warroch Head, where he was found that evening; but what became of the babe, frankly I cannot say. But he that was minister here then, that's now in a better place, had an opinion that the bairn was only conveyed to fairy-land for a season.
A young woman, who had been gathering nuts in Warroch wood upon the fatal day, was also strongly of opinion, though she declined to make positive oath, that she had seen Meg Merrilies at least a woman of her remarkable size and appearance start suddenly out of a thicket; she said she had called to her by name, but, as the figure turned from her and made no answer, she was uncertain if it were the gipsy or her wraith, and was afraid to go nearer to one who was always reckoned, in the vulgar phrase, 'no canny. This vague story received some corroboration from the circumstance of a fire being that evening found in the gipsy's deserted cottage.
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