Lighting the lantern, and taking down my long staff, I noticed that
my climbing lines had been taken from the peg where they usually
hung. My gun, too, was amissing. No one but myself had any use for
either the ropes or the gun, and I thought it curious that they
were removed; but at the moment I did not concern myself about so
apparently trivial a circumstance.
I soon rejoined the woman, and with her I made diligent search for
Thora. Backward and forward we tramped for many weary miles in the
wind and snow. We went by every road and footpath that we knew, yet
not even a footmark but our own could we find.
I questioned Ann and the shepherd, who had joined us, as to where
they had searched before I came out. The shepherd had been to a
cottage where lived an old woman named Mary Firth, but Mary was not
at home, and there was no one in the cottage--no trace of Thora.
"Has either o' ye been across at Jack Paterson's croft?" I then
asked.
"No," said the shepherd.
"Weel, then, that's the only place she can have been to, that I can
think of. So you two had better get back to Crua Breck and wait
till daylight. I'll gang to Jack Paterson's, and if they ken
nothing of Thora there, we can only wait till the morning."
The two returned to the farm, therefore, and I tramped through the
storm to the croft of Clouston, past the ghostly standing stones of
the Druids, and along the dreary, snow-covered road.
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