“And now,” said the precentor, “I call upon the three o’ you to come wi’ me.  Hendry Munn, you gang first.”

“I maun bide ahint,” Hendry said, with a sudden fear, “to lock up the kirk.”

“I’ll lock up the kirk,” Whamond answered harshly.

“You maun gie me the keys, though,” entreated the kirk officer.

“I’ll take care o’ the keys,” said Whamond.

“I maun hae them,” Hendry said, “to open the kirk on Sabbath.”

The precentor locked the doors, and buttoned up the keys in his trousers pockets.

“Wha kens,” he said, in a voice of steel, “that the kirk’ll be open next Sabbath?”

“Hae some mercy on him, Tamtnas,” Spens implored.  “He’s no twa-and-twenty.”

“Wha kens,” continued the precentor, “but that the next time this kirk is opened will be to preach it toom?”

“What road do we tak’?”

“The road to the hill, whaur he was seen last.”

CHAPTER XXXI.

Various bodies converging on the hill.

It would be coming on for a quarter-past nine, and a misty night, when I reached the school-house, and I was so weary of mind and body that I sat down without taking off my bonnet.  I had left the door open, and I remember listlessly watching the wind making a target of my candle, but never taking a sufficiently big breath to do more than frighten it.  From this lethargy I was roused by the sound of wheels.

In the daytime our glen road leads to many parts, but in the night only to the doctor’s.  Then the gallop of a horse makes farmers start up in bed and cry, “Who’s ill?” I went to my door and listened to the trap coming swiftly down the lonely glen, but I could not see it, for there was a trailing scarf of mist between the school-house and the road.  Presently I heard the swish of the wheels in water, and so learned that they were crossing the ford to come to me.  I had been unstrung by the events of the evening, and fear at once pressed thick upon me that this might be a sequel to them, as indeed it was.

While still out of sight the trap stopped, and I heard some one jump from it.  Then came this conversation, as distinct as though it had been spoken into my ear: 

“Can you see the school-house now, McKenzie?”

“I am groping for it, Rintoul.  The mist seems to have made off with the path.”

“Where are you, McKenzie?  I have lost sight of you.”

It was but a ribbon of mist, and as these words were spoken McKenzie broke through it.  I saw him, though to him I was only a stone at my door.

“I have found the house, Rintoul,” he shouted, “and there is a light in it, so that the fellow has doubtless returned.”

“Then wait a moment for me.”

“Stay where you are, Rintoul, I entreat you, and leave him to me.  He may recognize you.”