Ere he had done, the laird's
jaw had fallen, and further speech was impossible to him. But by
gestures sad and plain enough, he indicated that he knew nothing
of her, and had supposed her safe at home with her parents. In vain
they tried to persuade him to go back with them, promising every
protection: for sole answer he shook his head mournfully.
There came a sudden gust of wind among the branches. Joseph,
little used to trees and their ways with the wind, turned towards
the sound, and Malcolm unconsciously followed his movement. When
they turned again, the laird had vanished, and they took their way
homeward in sadness.
What passed next with the laird, can be but conjectured. It came
to be well enough known afterwards where he had been hiding; and
had it not been dusk as they came down the riverbank, the two men
might, looking up to the bridge from below, have had it suggested
to them. For in the half spandrel wall between the first arch and
the bank, they might have spied a small window, looking down on
the sullen, silent gloom, foam flecked with past commotion, that
crept languidly away from beneath. It belonged to a little vaulted
chamber in the bridge, devised by some banished lord as a kind of
summer house--long neglected, but having in it yet a mouldering
table, a broken chair or two, and a rough bench. A little path led
steep from the end of the parapet down to its hidden door. It was
now used only by the gamekeepers for traps and fishing gear, and
odds and ends of things, and was generally supposed to be locked
up.
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